I AM MUSIC

Playboi Carti constructing his most fully realized alternate universe — a record where hip-hop and rock and performance art collapse into each other and stop worrying about the collision. The production is enormous: distorted bass that rattles at frequencies below most rap, gothic synth textures, drums that sound like they're recorded in a sports arena. His vocal approach here is operatic in ambition if not in technique, the screams and falsetto yelps functioning as melodic counterpoint rather than lyrical vehicles. The self-mythologizing of the title is worn without irony — this is the sound of someone who has decided the persona and the person are the same entity. It belongs to a particular kind of experience: full-volume, low-light, maximum atmosphere. Not background music, not headphone intimacy — a record designed to overwhelm the immediate environment with its own reality.