The vampires are awake. At 4:45 a.m. PT, under a moon most of his fans had already rage-texted into oblivion, Playboi Carti finally unleashed I Am Music, his long-delayed, feverishly mythologized third album—a 30-track opus as gloriously unhinged as the three-year rollout that birthed it. If Carti’s 2020 *Whole Lotta Red* was a blood-soaked manifesto for rap’s vampiric future, this is the sunrise his cult never thought they’d see: a kaleidoscopic exorcism featuring Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, and enough starpower to light a small galaxy.
The road to I Am Music was paved with false starts, cryptic Instagram posts, and a title that shape-shifted like Carti’s persona—from Narcissist to Music before ballooning into its final, messianic form. Along the way, he teased tracks like “Pop Out” and “Ketamine” in live sets that felt more like séances than concerts, while fans dissected every social-media snippet like archaeologists decoding hieroglyphs. When the single “All Red” dropped in September, it seemed like the dam had broken… until it hadn’t. Carti, ever the troll, let the anticipation simmer until billboards materialized nationwide and a Times Square promo loomed like a Bat-Signal for the underground.
The album itself? A maximalist carnival. Kendrick Lamar’s verse on the opener “Ascension” is a spiritual gut-punch, while Travis Scott and The Weeknd warp their voices into spectral hooks that cling like smoke. Tracks like “Skinny Jeans” and “Rockstar” fuse Carti’s signature baby-voice snarl with industrial beats that sound like robots throwing down in a steel factory. Yet it’s the British performance artist Blackhaine—whose ominous Instagram reveal of the album art now feels like a prophecy fulfilled—who encapsulates the vibe: I Am Music is less a rap album than a dystopian art installation, pulsating with chaos and beauty in equal measure.
Carti’s genius lies in his ability to weaponize absurdity. Delaying the album four hours past its drop time? Releasing it at an hour when even night owls have given up? It’s all part of the theater. In an era where rap albums often feel focus-grouped into oblivion, I Am Music thrives on its own delirious unpredictability. It’s a reminder that Carti, for all his memeable quirks, remains one of the few true rock stars left—a mad scientist turning the mundane into the mythic.
Three years is a lifetime in rap, but Carti’s cult never wavered. They’ll dissect these songs for months, arguing over which ad-lib hits harder or which feature should’ve been longer. But for now, just press play. The vampires won. Again.
Source: Variety
