Demand for Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red was at an all time high in the days leading up to Christmas 2020. The 18 months following 2018’s Die Lit were wallpapered with the usual Carti snippets, SoundCloud leaks sourced from producers and group buys, promised release dates coming and going. Collaborations with Lil Uzi Vert, Offset and Smooky Margiela were coaxed onto the internet, tracks that would never see an official release, racking up millions of plays for everyone except the artists.
Social media was ablaze when the album dropped: “Carti missed;” “Whole lotta mid;” “where’s RIP Yams.” Whole Lotta Red is hoarser, harder-edged and far less user friendly than those leaks or the albums that preceded them. Initial reactions were mixed. Some fans clung to compilations of leaked snippets from 2019 rather than playing the actual album. Whole Lotta Red isn’t quite the “fuck you” heel turn of executive producer Kanye West’s Yeezus, but the message is equally crystalline: This isn’t Die Lit 2.
In practice, that translates to an inversion of his usual formula. Hazy synths and singsong earworms shrouded in spacey melodic beats still appear on Whole Lotta Red, but the bulk of the album is cloaked in harsh electronic tones, sawtooth oscillators and blown-out drum machines. It sounds like a future dystopia crawling with vampires, where every technorave devolves into a violent blood orgy.
Playboi Carti Fans Trash 'Whole Lotta Red' Album On Twitter But Praise Kanye West’s 'Go2DaMoon' Verse
While some artists made albums about quarantine in 2020 (Charli XCX’s How I’m Feeling Now) and others ignored it entirely (Drake’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes), Carti distills the emotions of fearful isolation down to their purest form without ever mentioning Covid-19. He’s in the house on his own, growing increasingly paranoid, literally gasping for breath. “If I die it’s gon be real sad/So I fuck on my bitch like it’s our last/I’m a rockstar so I never can relax,” he says with jitters on “Die4Guy.”
Leaving aside how album producers Starboy, Outtatown and Art Dealer dictated the year in SoundCloud rap, it’s the raw humanity beneath the pentagrams and plastic fangs that makes Whole Lotta Red the indisputable album of the year. It’s palpable on “Punk Monk,” when Carti sighs “I gotta worry bout me,” exhausted by “some friendly ass n-ggas” and on “Over,” when he gets too lit and wonders aloud, “How the fuck we got to where we started? This love don’t feel how it felt when we started.”
Playboi Carti’s songwriting has always blurred the lines between hooks and verses, but here song structures fall away, demonic chants turned to meditative mantras by sheer repetition. The beats are shinier, harder, drenched in the pinkest pink or light-devouring vantablack, the militant stomp of “Stop Breathing” and “ILoveUIHateU” giving way to the dizzying neon gyrations of “M3tamorphosis” and “Not Playin.”
But while the style might be new, the substance is familiar. After all, rage beats are just plug beats with more electronic influence (take it from MexikoDro and Popstar Benny). That identical sonic scaffolding helps unify older leaks like “Place” with new cuts such as “Slay3r” and “Meh,” so although the album rips through ideas at a breakneck pace, those swerves and left turns never veer into whiplash — and that’s on an album where a Bach sample segues into a Maaly Raw beat.
When it comes to mainstream success, Carti’s constant reinvention is a double-edged sword, where fans eager for the next “Magnolia” or “Foreign” end up playlisting other artists making similar songs. In fact, Carti’s biggest hit in 2021 wasn’t from Whole Lotta Red, but his feature on Trippie Redd’s “Miss the Rage,” which nails the aesthetics of being a rager without actually embodying any of its meaning.
There will always be more demand for Playboi Carti’s music than supply, the “raison d’etre” for a legion of copycats. But this is the first time his imitators haven’t been scrambling to catch up. Tripp At Knight feels like a Carti homage, but while it certainly gestures towards the rage sound, Trippie’s imitation of Carti is largely rooted in 2019 rather than 2021.
Elsewhere, Mario Judah had the audacity to call Whole Lotta Red trash, appealing to fairweather fans who miss Die Lit enough to shovel down the shlock Judah calls music.
That said, there’s still plenty of “new Carti” for people who like his old shit and already bought the old album. But the sound of Whole Lotta Red was everywhere in 2021. Yeat, Ken Car$on and SoFaygo have been running with the baton all year, and 2022 will likely see more of the same as labels rush in to profit. Carti didn’t invent the rage, but he popularized and put his own stamp on the sound, weaving in Bon Iver samples and his best rapping to date.
In a year flush with big budget releases that came and went (Migos, J. Cole, Lil Durk and Lil Baby, Young Stoner Life, Drake), Whole Lotta Red stands apart for its clarity of purpose and efficient execution. Executive producer Kanye West’s DONDA had a similarly grandiose vision, but the final product was overlong and overwrought, belabored to the point of boredom.
Playboi Carti's Lollapalooza Set Caused Distraught Miley Cyrus Fans To Fear The Rage
Here, Kanye’s deft touch is evident not only in the album’s production and mixing, fine-tuned for arena tours and AirPods alike but also in Carti’s raps, which unfurl new pages of his personal history and corners of his psyche. His vocal performance takes after Ye’s best work. Carti raps and sings and screams into the mic like he’ll never make another album.
In Anne Rice’s 1988 novel The Queen of the Damned, the immortal Lestat de Lioncourt has taken up as lead singer of a human rock band, confessing his murderous sins over electric guitar. Rice’s reinvention of the vampire founded the modern mythology of a seductive bloodsucker, a precursor to the Edward Cullens of today. Lestat is typically monstrous and occasionally altruistic, a bisexual fashionista and an egomaniacal antihero, unwilling to abide by the rules of vampire society. In 2021, he would be draped in Givenchy, ordering prison shankings, rapping circles around Kid Cudi, going “bananas one time,” demanding to know who his lover fucked in the next room.
He might as well be the blueprint for Carti’s new role as “King Vamp,” the latest chapter in the rapper’s evolution from pop star to rock star to ruler of the undead. Semi-automatic dracos are made in Romania and Dracula was too. Whole Lotta Red is the sound of a new legend dying to be born. It’ll be album of the year in 2022.
REPEAT ME
Whole lotta ass
I listened to this the day it came out and it was terrible. I tried listening to it about a month later, and nothing had changed. I read this article and decided, let’s give it one more honest try. This album is really bad. Someone please point me in the direction of this actually being a fire album.
It’s trash, music for retards
It’s not for everyone. Appreciate you giving it an honest shot
Please… don’t compare this garbage to Donda. I know Donda had too many songs, but that album is way better and way less boring than WLR. The problem with WLR is that Carti sucks. The beats were good, the artist is trash, his weird sounds are intolerable. That’s always gonna be his problem. All the people you claim tried to copy this album also suck and have no influence or status in this industry. What a terrible article trying to justify a trash review 1 year later, nobody is buying your BS.
I was thinking if the record label paid for this review or the journalist is way to into Carti. And what’s Donda got to do with this?
If labels paid for reviews here then Roddy Ricch would not have received such a low score.
Told y’all a year ago. I was literally the only person saying positive shit go back… the concert in DC was dope af and I’m around to see WLR get some flowers
Let me give you your flowers now , because this is the last time we will here about this trash, until some documentary about how bad the year was.
This site has turned into nothing but garbage. After those horrible year end awards you guys put out this review to solidify that this website is over. Whoever is running it is taking it straight to the dumpster with this horrible point of view of hip hop. Thanks for contributing to ruining this culture.
This site has turned into nothing but garbage. After those horrible year end awards you guys put out this review to solidify that this website is over. Whoever is running it is taking it straight to the dumpster with this horrible point of view of hip hop. Thanks for contributing to ruining this culture.
Must be some good crack yall are on in the HipHopDX offices. FOH with this garbage.
Music for retards
i must be retarded
Embarrassingly horrible. Does anybody listen to this ?
That YouTube clip was the first song I heard from this dude. I’ve gotta say… I was pretty surprised.. This dude is ass. Shocked y’all like this mental midget shit
No.. Just No man
Old carti’s music way better than the sound he on now. Its really bad now for me. I dont get who is he trying to appeal with this. Definitely not for the streets
Imma old head but still check in on the new artists. Orange Soda was the only track that hit.This story is click bait troll behavior when Nas dropped two classics this year.
beauty
Amazing album
It’s sounds like someone with a bad case of autotuned diarrhea and decided to wipe their@$$ with the mic and wants to top it off by squatting over and sh*tt*ng on his weirdo fans. Don’t like this Ladyboy at all.
this is too funny lmfaooo
Yall know it’s mediocre but calling it a classic draws more clicks. Just like how saying montero is a revolutionary song
WLR is a little overrated imo but I still think it is a good album. It’s got some songs like Stop Breathing, New N3on, M3tamorphosis and Control that I like a lot but overall it’s not great, but solid. I think it will be inspirational to these up and coming rage rappers which is part of the reason it’s higher than a 2. 3/5
3/5
Solid and I think will be inspirational.
I tried. I really, really tried. But despite the songs only averaging 2min each, I couldn’t get through 1/2 of the album. I know I’m not the target audience being an 80’s baby, but figured I’d give it a shot after reading a couple of solid reviews (here and Pitchfork). Good God it’s awful. Kids liking this shit makes me fear for the future of human existence.
Hey man, all good. Much respect to you or giving it a shot. It’s not for everyone and the review does point that out despite the high rating. Thanks for the thoughtful comment and honest attempt.
Sounds like diarrhea to me
Massively overrated. Not sure why it suddenly became cool to pretend to love this bloated, mediocre, too-much-filler album.
grew on me heavy, way ahead of its time
You must either be heavily on drugs or mentally retarded (or possibly both) to enjoy this garbage.
you must be retarded
Whole Lotta Butt Stuff. No No No, Me No Likey.
After a year of listening to this album, I got to say that this is definitely a polarizing album but it’s also one of the most hypnotizing and memorable projects I’ve heard in a while. The only downside is the album drags on a bit too long. One listening session won’t do its justice either but I get why people wouldn’t like it.
4/5