It's difficult to explain the appeal of Playboi Carti's music without sounding like a complete maniac. Carti is a minimally charismatic, often lethargic presence with mic skills that are sloppy on a good day, yet he almost always manages to deliver a product that is really enjoyable to listen to. On his official debut LP Die Lit, the most inexplicably enjoyable rapper to ever hop into a booth shines a bright light on these unconventional musical gifts by putting forth the strongest effort of his pretty brief career thus far.
What makes Carti such a compelling figure is the emphasis he puts on utilizing bold production. While he's far from the only rapper that choses to let the beat do the heavy lifting, Carti has a tendency to gravitate towards shit that is more visceral and off-the-wall than the genre norm. This audial gift gets taken to the next level on Die Lit. Enlisting frequent collaborator Pi'erre Bourne to handle the bulk of the work behind the boards was a brilliant creative decision that heightened the suffocating atmosphere that drives his music. Bourne's mesmerizing beats transform Carti's parade of ablib-and-excess driven verses into hypnotic blasts of ignorant oddball trap that left me feeling like I had floated into a parallel universe where sports cars, Instagram models and hallucinogenic substances reign supreme. When you roll out music with an aesthetic that's as hard-hitting and richly textured as the one that flows through Die Lit, the lack of technical proficiency present in the rapping doesn't matter in the slightest.
As satisfied as I am with the current state of hip-hop, I completely understand the criticisms that are lobbied towards records like Die Lit. Listening to collections of tracks about popping pills, buying designer clothes and having wild sex with a multitude of women can be really tedious, particularly if you have an affinity for the genre's rich history of raw, powerful storytelling. That being said, plenty of other genres have artists that are solely renowned for their instrumentation and I don't see why hip-hop should be viewed through a different lens. Beats are the hip-hop equivalent of a cool guitar riff or a thundering bassline and when an album boasts a collection of strong ones, it can serve as the driving force behind its memorability, catchiness, etc. Die Lit is as effective as a mood piece can possibly be and I'd recommend it to anyone that's willing to look past the repetitive, non-lyrical structure of the rapping.
What makes Carti such a compelling figure is the emphasis he puts on utilizing bold production. While he's far from the only rapper that choses to let the beat do the heavy lifting, Carti has a tendency to gravitate towards shit that is more visceral and off-the-wall than the genre norm. This audial gift gets taken to the next level on Die Lit. Enlisting frequent collaborator Pi'erre Bourne to handle the bulk of the work behind the boards was a brilliant creative decision that heightened the suffocating atmosphere that drives his music. Bourne's mesmerizing beats transform Carti's parade of ablib-and-excess driven verses into hypnotic blasts of ignorant oddball trap that left me feeling like I had floated into a parallel universe where sports cars, Instagram models and hallucinogenic substances reign supreme. When you roll out music with an aesthetic that's as hard-hitting and richly textured as the one that flows through Die Lit, the lack of technical proficiency present in the rapping doesn't matter in the slightest.
As satisfied as I am with the current state of hip-hop, I completely understand the criticisms that are lobbied towards records like Die Lit. Listening to collections of tracks about popping pills, buying designer clothes and having wild sex with a multitude of women can be really tedious, particularly if you have an affinity for the genre's rich history of raw, powerful storytelling. That being said, plenty of other genres have artists that are solely renowned for their instrumentation and I don't see why hip-hop should be viewed through a different lens. Beats are the hip-hop equivalent of a cool guitar riff or a thundering bassline and when an album boasts a collection of strong ones, it can serve as the driving force behind its memorability, catchiness, etc. Die Lit is as effective as a mood piece can possibly be and I'd recommend it to anyone that's willing to look past the repetitive, non-lyrical structure of the rapping.
Grade: B
Standout Tracks
1.R.I.P.
2.Mileage (feat. Chief Keef)
3.Poke It Out (feat. Nicki Minaj)
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