For me, the most interesting thing about MUSIC isn’t the rollout, the size, or even the usual argument over whether Playboi Carti is saying enough. It’s the voice. On a record this long, that has to be the engine, and in 2025 Carti seems to understand that better than ever. What keeps MUSIC from collapsing under its own weight is not lyrical detail or clean sequencing. It’s the way he keeps changing shape, sometimes from one track to the next and sometimes inside the same song. I don’t think that makes the album fully cohesive, but it does make it hard to dismiss. When Carti locks into a tone, then suddenly breaks it with a rasp, a squeal, or a stacked ad-lib, the record starts making sense on its own terms.
Carti’s voice is the organizing principle
The clearest early proof is EVIL J0RDAN, still one of the best arguments for the whole album. Carti flips between higher, needling phrases and a lower, rougher delivery that sounds like he’s trying to scrape the beat with his throat. Around the first minute, the performance starts feeling less like a verse and more like a series of attacks: clipped lines, sudden outbursts, then that guttural push that gives the track its bite. That’s what MUSIC does well over and over. Carti treats his voice like the lead instrument and lets the words come second.
You can hear that idea from the start. POP OUT, the opener, doesn’t waste time building a tidy thesis; it throws you straight into a harsh vocal inflection that announces the album as performance first. CRUSH keeps the pressure up with a more compressed, punchy delivery, while K POP strips things down to a shorter blast where the hook lands because of tone and bounce more than content. If there’s a complaint to make, it’s that Carti sometimes trusts the voice to do so much that the actual songs can feel half-written. Still, that choice is also why the record has an identity at all.
The beats carry weight, but Carti knows how to ride them
A lot of rap records lean on production; MUSIC makes that dependence obvious, then turns it into part of the appeal. The beats here are hypnotic, restless, and often more memorable than the bars, but Carti is rarely passive on top of them. He bends to the production, then tries to rough it up. That’s why tracks like GOOD CREDIT and HBA work even when you couldn’t call them lyrical showcases. The energy comes from repetition, vocal layering, and the way his delivery keeps changing the temperature of a loop.
RATHER LIE is probably the cleanest example of the album sounding locked in. It has a smoother glide than some of the more abrasive cuts, and Carti responds by lightening his voice instead of forcing the same snarl everywhere. That flexibility matters. Elsewhere, I SEEEEEE YOU BABY BOI and OLYMPIAN show how he can still make a lighter register work when the beat leaves him enough air. For an album often accused of relying on effects and mood, the more accurate read is that Carti is constantly adjusting his performance to the beat’s shape. The writing may be thin, but the delivery is not lazy.
Why the sprawl helps and hurts
The album’s biggest problem is also the thing that makes it feel important. MUSIC is huge. The research around it keeps circling the same point: this is a long, overstuffed release, and that’s hard to argue with when the tracklist runs all the way from POP OUT to BACKR00MS. Some cuts hit like quick jolts, others hang around longer, and the back half can start to feel like Carti testing how much repetition he can get away with before momentum dips. More material does not automatically mean more substance, and this album proves that a few times over.
Still, I don’t think the excess is accidental. The scale is part of the stunt. Carti wants MUSIC to land as an event, a flood, a record where one persona gives way to another before you’ve fully adjusted. That approach creates real drag, but it also gives him room to try deep rasps, pitched-up hooks, dead-eyed mutters, and blown-out ad-libs without having to settle on one mode. The result is messy, but not directionless. It’s a performance-heavy rap album that mistakes size for songcraft now and then, yet keeps stumbling into great moments because the central performer is so committed to constant reinvention.
Where the older comparisons actually help
The easy move is to stack this up against Whole Lotta Red and call it a sequel in spirit, but that only gets you part of the way there. Yes, there are echoes of that record in the more abrasive stretches, and tracks like I SEEEEEE YOU BABY BOI and OLYMPIAN reportedly remind some listeners of Slay3r. But what stands out to me is that Carti sounds more deliberate here, especially when he drops into that deeper, raspier persona. He’s still chasing chaos, just with better control over when to tighten the screws and when to float.
RATHER LIE points back even further. Its smoother drift recalls the pull of Location from the self-titled mixtape and Foreign from Die Lit, which is useful because it shows MUSIC isn’t only about shock value. Carti is revisiting older modes, but he’s doing it with a broader vocal toolkit. That said, the earlier releases were leaner. Die Lit and the self-titled tape felt more immediate because they didn’t carry as much clutter. MUSIC has more voices, more poses, more debris. Sometimes that reads as ambition; sometimes it just reads as too much.
The verdict
MUSIC works best when Playboi Carti stops pretending the song itself is the main attraction and lets the performance take over. That’s not a backhanded compliment; it’s the album’s whole design. In 2025, Carti sounds more versatile than he did on earlier releases, and when the beats and the delivery line up, the record feels huge for the right reasons. But the album also proves that spectacle can’t fully replace structure. There’s real drag here, and some of these tracks blur together once the novelty of the runtime wears off. Still, the highs are strong enough that I’d put this at a solid 7/10, with EVIL J0RDAN, RATHER LIE, GOOD CREDIT, and HBA as the clearest proof of what Carti is doing right. Give it a listen.
Tracklist
- POP OUT 2:42
- CRUSH 2:53
- K POP 1:53
- EVIL J0RDAN 3:04
- MOJO JOJO 2:36
- PHILLY 3:06
- RADAR 1:48
- RATHER LIE 3:30
- FINE SHIT 1:47
- BACKD00R 3:10
- TOXIC 2:15
- MUNYUN 2:34
- CRANK 2:28
- CHARGE DEM HOES A FEE 3:45
- GOOD CREDIT 3:10
- I SEEEEEE YOU BABY BOI 2:39
- WAKE UP F1LTHY 2:49
- JUMPIN 1:33
- TRIM 3:14
- COCAINE NOSE 2:31
- WE NEED ALL DA VIBES 3:01
- OLYMPIAN 2:55
- OPM BABI 2:53
- TWIN TRIM 1:35
- LIKE WEEZY 1:56
- DIS 1 GOT IT 2:04
- WALK 1:34
- HBA 3:33
- OVERLY 1:46
- SOUTH ATLANTA BABY 2:13
- 2024 3:29
- BACKR00MS 2:40
