In Review: Whole Lotta Red
A genre defined by high volume output and rapidly changing trends, trap music manages to push boundaries while respecting its lineage of gamechangers— the key albums that defined a particular, evolutionary sound of the genre for years to come. After much anticipation, trap’s identity was taken to a darker and more experimental place this week when Playboi Carti blessed fans with his long-awaited Whole Lotta Red, an emotional and experimental studio album that pushes limits while embodying the influence of those gamechangers that paved the way. Uniquely Carti as it is, the project reflects a similar energy and arrangement of lyric to music as Waka Flocka’s infamous Flockaveli, which defined 2010’s trap and inspired many of Carti’s influences such as Chief Keef, Uzi, and Young Thug.
But Playboi Carti himself has always been an artist destined to his own path. Perhaps a culmination of everything we've heard the past 10 years, he's always been on the cutting edge— a daring artist never afraid to push boundaries to satisfy his sound. From his earliest work’s tendency to test limits and start conversations, fans came to expect something totally unique with WLR. And after months of rumors, leaks, and Mario Judah threats, here we finally are. Ten years since Flockaveli and 963 days since Die Lit, Playboi Carti presents Whole Lotta Red.
Take a new child, new controversies, new celebrity friends, and a new vampire-punk persona, mix it up in a global pandemic, and this album presents 2020 Playboi Carti in a way that’s as bold and unpredictable as it is authentic and classic. Now, the album might not be your thing. But if y'all wanted some damn "punk trap” after commending the energy of Die Lit, this is it. Carti cranked it up to ten making something as scummy, brutish, and in your face as a legit punk record, and the album doesn’t let up for a second. It's one of the hardest, nastiest, and most polarizing mainstream rap albums in recent memory, at least since Yeezus. The entire album is distorted and rippling with terse, dissonant synths, pulverizing bass, and gnarled, sharp trap drums. The songs are almost all extremely short, like old punk rock records short, with Carti's voice mixed on so incredibly loud, just going on a stream of consciousness with flows that bend and morph with the mood of the beat. He is halfway yelling at points, simply shouting or aggressively panting into the mic at other points, just bugging the fuck out on every song. Whole thing sounds like some fucking insane basement rager.
This new sound hits right away as the album’s first track “Rockstar Made” opens sounding like a spaceship from Close Encounters communicating with pipe organs. We’re plunged into a world of fat, blown-out 808s, spiraling grimey keys, and one of Carti's most eccentric vocal performances, rasping and shouting his way through the song in a manic fervor for over three minutes. As your ears decide whether the tones are coming or going, Carti’s voice struggles for its tongue. "Never too much (Uh), never too much (Yeah, uh)” Carti belts in uplifting sighs. The first-person mantra of “I got some racks, yeah, yeah (What?)" is repeated until the line between Carti’s mind and the listener's is erased. He's in true rock star mode on this opening cut, letting go of all inhibitions and driving an ATV straight into a trap hell, dreads out and iced-out fangs bared. Really, it's the perfect tone-setter for what's likely Carti's most eccentric body of work, an hour of surreal, mind-numbing, and sometimes harrowing trap that leaves you bewildered at every twist and turn.
The next song “Go2DaMoon” with Kanye West features the two talking over a prominent and dramatic Wheezy-produced string section. This takes an aggressive turn with “Stop Breathing,” which is more for the moshpit than the Bose headphones. He sounds enraged on this, with lyrics bragging, "I just hit a lick with a mask, MF DOOM" matched by his growling, ultra-abrasive vocals and the massive 808 bass hits that accompany them.
On the succeeding track "Beno!" we can see that despite his transformation into a punk vampire, Carti can still fluidly dip his toes into a sweeter, more melodic style, showing off his penchant for upbeat bangers. Here, Carti’s delivery oscillates between aggressive, spitty vocals and a more melodic, playful tone over a video game-y synth that could've easily featured someone like Young Nudy or Lil Uzi Vert. It's given an extra layer of texture by the grimy peals of bass that occasionally reverberate through the track, a clever musical idea that shows both Carti and his producers' attention to detail on this album. This track is followed up by “JumpOutTheHouse,” another cacophonous moshpit starter right down to the Richie Souf beat.
One of the most anticipated tracks on the album,"M3tamorphosis" gives fans just what they wanted out of a Kid Cudi feature. Through a field of sweetly chiming keys, white noise, and a placid, frozen lake of autotuned humming, Carti launches into a bizarre figure skate, yelping and moaning for a full three minutes until Cudder takes over with some smooth, confident flows.
A later track, "New Tank," despite being composed of little more than bass, drums, and a squealing melodic loop, is a true-blue banger, complete with what's likely to be an iconic line in the Hip Hop Twitter lexicon, "They thought I was gay!" It kicks off a three track run including "Teen X" featuring Future and ending with "Meh," both of which succeed as trunk-knockers thanks to some tight vocal acrobatics from the two rappers over a manic instrumental by Maaly Raw on the former and an absolutely bizarre, head-spinning beat on the latter.
This energy carries well into the back half of the album on tracks like "Vamp Anthem," which lives up to it’s name as Carti’s most laser-focused flows slip between slabs of spooky gothic organ. More interesting details come in the dynamic duo of "New N3on" and "Control." Both feature cloudy, cotton-candy sweet beats that sound simple at first, but then have greater underlying melodic lines that turn them into blissful trap ballads. New N3on’s instrumental clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's Homogenic and is elevated by one of Carti's squeakiest, most rubbery vocal performances yet, revealing brilliant new frontiers for the artist. On the other hand, Control’s instrumental is akin to a Luv is Rage or even Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World track with Carti’s striking vocal howls floating through the chorus.
“On That Time,” clashes warped, eerie guitar chops against foggy, milky splashes of synth chord all with a primal, brooding bass attack to form one of the album’s most manic displays of production. For an album reported to be "lacking" after leaked tracks, this is the best summation of his former strengths. The track erodes into "King Vamp” — “K-I-N-G V-A-M-P, Yeah, that's me,” he cries between other classic Carti adlibs with a clean, synth melody.
Another huge three-track run of the album, "Place," "Sky," and "Over," is quickly appearing to be a fan favorite thanks to Carti's relatively reeled back, simple flows and melodies that are a bit of a callback to his earlier work, all taking place over glacial and brightly singing beats that would feel right at home on Self Titled or Die Lit.
Pulsing organs and a stuttering snare delicately propel "Place." Carti’s chains can be heard frosting over the rainy, gray jam. Words accumulate and stick in his mouth like eye crust. “Whole lot of hoes, whole lotta red, whole lot of bitches (Whole lot of, yeah),” he mumbles while Pi’erre Bourne squirts whale-chant synths from his laptop.
After the rockets exhaust, Carti floats alone in orbit. "Sky" boils down "Long Time” and "Flatbed Freestyle" to their spectral essence. The synth laden ballad comes closest to bridging Carti’s lyrical sentiment to the instrumental effect. “I told my boy go roll like (What?) ten blunts for me (Alright)” he sings in his trademark falsetto. The synths melt and weep as the album shifts into its underwater mode.
Carti sneaks one last hard-hitting cut towards the back end with "Die4Guy." Lacing organ and feedback-laced electric guitar with shots of bright synth and a low-register, and a scratchy vocal performance, Carti brings even more wild one-liners to the table in the form of bars like "If I die, it's gon' be real sad."
The next track, the penultimate “Not PLaying" brings to mind The White Album, as it somehow combines the sentiment of Lennon's LP1 closer; the ode to his dead mother, "Julia," with Ringo and Paul's maudlin, yet sincere LP2 finale, "Goodnight." Skittery synths and 808s boom as Carti condones with affection, “Out of here, outer space. Pussy all on my face." To further emphasize your feeling at that moment and the album's overall theme, Carti bows out with "I'm not playing, I'm not playin', yeah.” If you didn’t think so before; you will now.
Finally, the album concludes with what's likely one of Carti's boldest steps forward. A flip of Bon Iver's "iMi" Carti’s "F33l Like3 Dyin," puts his voice on wax and bares his soul over Justin Vernon's chipmunked vocals, discussing his search for love and his relationship with his mother in an oddly sentimental performance. Although the production doesn't stand out as much, the emotion and the honest lyricism are what really push this song over the top. Really, it pushes the entire album over the top, because it feels like an album that Carti actually wanted to make instead of trying to make more music that sounded like his leaks or sounded like his old work.
Whole Lotta Red is an emotional, psychological experience, it's the sound of a man losing faith in himself destroying himself, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, Carti hated being Carti, but ended up with the most ideal, natural Carti record yet. He decided to let his inhibitions run free and make music that he liked regardless of whether his fans would enjoy it or not. He plays with his vocal range, he plays with his production, he plays with his cadences and melodies, he even toys with his lyricism to create more raw, emotional tracks. And as a result of the risks he took and the bold directions he moved in, he created a body of work that is much more daring, exciting, and unpredictable than 24 "@MEH"s.
