Carti’s restlessness is the engine of the album, a mirrored image of his boredom, consideration span, and unbridled creativeness in equal measure. That chaos is hole when he’s swiftly following the blueprint of in style status rap albums, thrilling when it’s used to seize the sensation of the music in his bloodstream. For instance, he’s having a shit-talking ball on the Wealthy Kidz homage “Like Weezy.” And “Opm Babi” is mainly Carti’s tackle 1017 Thug’s stream-of-conscious mayhem, with a collision of gunshots, Swamp Izzo supervillain laughs, and blown-out bass. Whereas that’s taking place, Carti vibes out (his subjects of selection are oral intercourse and ketamine) as his pitch quickly shifts from sounding like he’s mid-burp to excessive sufficient that, when he hangs onto a observe on the finish, he virtually channels the falsetto of a teenage Tevin Campbell.
A good chunk of the album feels rushed, bringing in concepts virtually as quick because it scraps them. On “HBA,” one other spotlight of the 2024 single run, new snare rolls that sound like they have been added on the final minute are so jarring that even the lead producer of the tune, Cardo, appeared caught off guard. There are tracks that really feel like they have been uploaded to the album by chance, like “Twin Trim,” which is, for no matter purpose, a 90-second solo Lil Uzi tune that may’ve been amassing mud on Carti’s arduous drive for years. Carti seems as overwhelmed by the unchecked freedom and limitless sources the WLR increase made accessible to him as I’m writing about it.
Sharper is “I Seeeeee You Child Boi,” the place the mix of Carti’s vaporous melodies and DJ Moon and Lucian’s lush beat creates a flamboyant bounce. None of that sexiness carries over to “Nice Shit”—though the beat is fairly—as a result of the misogyny baked into controlling lyrics like, “My bitch so dangerous, she will be able to’t even go outdoors/My bitch so dangerous, she will be able to’t even submit on-line” is amplified whenever you’ve been arrested for allegedly choking your girlfriend. As Carti pushes into his late 20s, the hypermasculinity of the Opium motion solely feels darker and extra charged.
Talking of hypermasculinity, Carti’s factor these days is swagger-jacking Future. On WLR, he lifted Future flows on the common, however now the resemblance is uncanny—his vocal cosplay is best at sounding like a fried Future than Future. His raspy hangover raps have a pleasant DS2 edge to them on “Overly,” the place the pummeling drums give me flashbacks to listening to Juicy J and Lex Luger’s Rubba Band Enterprise mixtape. In the meantime, when Future pops in (on “Trim” and “Cost Dem Hoes a Payment”), he’s nonetheless in the identical innocuous event-album mode of We Don’t Belief You and We Nonetheless Don’t Belief You.
