DISCLAIMER before I drop this essay on ur headtop: I fw at least half the tracks on MUSIC and have put 800+ plays on that album, which may not be evident from the critiques I'm about to level against it

I've been sounding the alarm on this since the album dropped, and it seems to be getting confirmed by every piece of info that comes out about his intentions with this album and the way people been talking bout Carti since it came out:

He's losing what made him special in the first place

From his commercial debut onwards, his bread and butter was focused front-to-back projects with an uncompromised direction, god tier beat selection and earworm hooks. That was the consistent thread through all his tapes, regardless of whatever overarching sound he was going for.

Then MUSIC drops, and it's a hodgepodge of tracks from every version of the album created over the last 5 years and rap caviar bait features. Don't believe me? Here's the breakdown:

[Narcissist 2021]: 3
[V1 2022]: 3
[V1 2023]: 1
[V2 2023]: 7
[V3 2023]: 11
[V3 2024]: 8
[V3 2025]: 1

We Need All The Vibes is a Thug/Gunna throwaway from 2021. Rather Lie and Fine S*** are AI experiments from XO/Ojivolta camp. 5 Travis Scott Feats. 3 Kendrick feats. Like come on now.

Carti used to makes artists step out of their comfort zone to rap on his s***, and now his album feats sound like he just slapped his verse on one of their throwaways. And don't get me started on HIS recent feature run:

Weeknd - Popular
Travis - FE!N
¥$ - FUK SUMN
¥$ - CARNIVAL
Future - Type S***
Camilla Cabello - I LUV IT
¥$ - Field Trip
Weeknd - Timeless (AI)
Latto - Blick Sum
NAV - UNLIMITED
Ken - Off The Meter
JACKBOYS - WHERE WAS YOU
YoungBoy- Fire Your Manager
Lil Baby - Let's Do It
Fatt Smaxk - Saxk Or Die
Ken - deaf note
Ken - wedidit
L5 - BEEN ON

A handful of those are good songs, but the features themselves were mostly samey nothingburgers outside of a few. Be fr, when was the last time you were excited to hear a Carti feature? Or heard a snip from him that you actually cared about? And you can see this sentiment echoed anytime Carti is discussed these days, even if no one tries to explain the vibe shift.

Long story short, Carti used all of the goodwill he'd accrued to aurafarm for nearly 5 years straight, waited until he was literally forced to drop the album to avoid having to refund every pre-order, just to release a compilation of tracks thrown together at the last possible second, with the tracklist's express purpose (by his own admission) being industry appeal and grammy nominations.

In the lead up to MUSIC, Carti objectively became bigger than ever before. Even without a Grammy nomination, he's achieved some mainstream hits by hitching his cart to The Weeknd and Travis, and the Antagonist 2.0 tour was wildly successful. But I don't think it's sustainable. He sacrificed his mystique on the altar of industry appeal for a few AI hits and a chance at becoming "the Travis Scott of Atlanta."

What a dream to have lol. You create one of the most rabid & loyal fanbases of all time spanning multiple generations of listeners, define the entire sound for 80% of the 2020s up and comers off your authentic vision, and you throw it away because you wanna be..... late career Travis Scott? Just a mind boggling thought-process from somebody who's historically had their finger on the pulse like no other.

So what's next for Carti? Has he lost the sauce, or is this just a misstep for an artist who will continue to grow? How would you fix his career trajectory and shift the current perception of him?

Additional thoughts on the MUSIC album itself can be found here. Post got 6 likes, so you know it's some A1 s***.

Ok im going to read whats in OP!

Can’t expect an artist who blew up post 2017 to maintain superstar status.

stream bait dogshit bloated the hell out of this

singles>>

Lyrical ability aside he's subtly built up a Kanye Kendrick thing where each album is it's own era and aesthetic of it's own, relatively to his niche of rap (where the requirement is just using different type beats and the cover art).

if he continues on that trajectory he'll be straight but much like kanye and pharrell before him, he's stretching his worst creative era (post yeezus crazy rich guy or because i'm happyyyyy! reddit 808 park ranger from yogi bear ass hat) into his longest era (MUSIC/post-MUSIC future voice Atlanta gang boss)

MUSIC just sounded uninspired to me. Terrible sequencing, no clear vision, just a product to pump up streaming revenue. There was never a moment in his career that made me feel that way before, everything seemed focused and purposeful.

On the feature front, remember when Carti would show up in the most random places and completely switch up a song? Almeda, Earfquake, etc. Now his features feel government mandated. It's like he stopped caring about music entirely.

no one reading all that

from the singles Music was shaping up to be its own era and sound etc but the album itself is a different story

Intellectuals did

not reading that but yeah. he went from being one of the most interesting and innovative rappers of his era to being a gay vampire tryna cosplay as a street nigga

Yeah music sucks and he’s washed now and he’ll never recapture the moment. WLR sounds worse in retrospect. Also he can’t perform and is a homosexual.

didnt he say his label ruined the album or do i misremember

I think the body cam footage and beating women thing did worse harm to his image

hes a junkie atp, he dont give af about making music anymore besides doing d****

carti wasted his commercial prime thinking he was some kind of artistic genius who could wait half a decade to drop an album because his teenage fanbase convinced him he was.

he set high expectations that he came nowhere close to meeting and now his prime is over and he has one "okay" album to show for it. he should have just dropped narcissist in 2022 and music in 2024.

i lowkirkenuinely read all of it

i totally forgot about the songs we heard prior to music. lowkey he fumbled by not dropping in 2024 to begin with

we gotta find and be violent with whoever convinced him to primarily do deep voice on MUSIC

if he committed to this sound thru the whole album this s*** would have rejuvenated the mainstream

I agree with this, but I think the key difference is Carti's doing this at the most pivotal stage of his career, whereas Ye was already a bonafide global superstar and Pharrell had nearly 20 years of industry work under his belt by this point

Yup it seemed like he had a clear vision for the album at this point, was fully committed to the rollout, and then let Ye convince him to delay it again to give Vultures era the spotlight

Throw tomatoes at me all u want for this comparison, but WLR-->MUSIC was reaching Blonde followup levels of hype. Frank bowed out and who can blame him, so if you're gonna let s*** simmer for 5 years, you better knock it out of the park

I understand letting WLR marinate for a few years. It went from being ruthlessly clowned on, to cult classic, to widely acclaimed over the course of just one or two years. Stood well on its own, made for legendary live "performances" (still cant decide if the way he handled his festival sets/shows was real punk s*** or just unbelievable laziness propped up by a good album)

But 4 and a half years? I think he was nervous about living up to expectations, which only compounded with every passing month. And over the course of that time, the rage genre he popularized started to evolve without him, making half of what he was working on behind the scenes sound tame or tired by comparison. This left MUSIC in a weird, directionless spot. And I think the final product makes it clear that he never finalized a direction for the album. So it ended up being a collage of all the different s*** he worked on during that time period intermingled with industry-bait, because the one thing he could decide on is that he wanted mainstream success.

And I can't think of a worse way to justify a near half decade of buildup.

Carti’s going through the same thing Thug’s been going through when it comes to newer albums using older songs

at the beginning of Thug’s career, each new project would be all songs from that era, save for maybe 1 or 2 older songs that could be seen as bonus tracks, to sound cohesive

but after SMF, Thug started making his albums inclusive of earlier recording sessions. a good chunk of Punk (2021) is older songs from all the way back to 2018 (one song from 2017 was on the penultimate tracklist but the feature wouldn’t clear it last minute). Business is Business (2023, jail album) is from about that same range of dates. UY Scuti was all new music, but SL3 also includes a handful of older songs that his new artists hopped on.

albums sound more focused when all the songs are from the same recording periods. fans can tell when the songs are anachronistic, it just feels like frankenstein’s monster at the end.

it’s like they actively just gave up on trying to do this anymore

he won’t clear it lol

He was always corny to me. Glad we getting him outta here already

Movin’ on Molly
Movin’ on Molly
Movin’ on Molly
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