After years of hype, leaks, and delays, Playboi Carti’s album ‘MUSIC’ finally dropped on March 14, 2025—and it’s a complete mess. At 76 minutes with 30 songs, the album is overloaded and all over the place, with a few gem songs buried under many forgettable songs.
Carti, who helped shape modern hip-hop with his past albums Die Lit and Whole Lotta Red, tries to keep that same energy, but MUSIC just doesn’t hit the same with his new ‘grudgy’ music style. The album starts off with “POP OUT” which, honestly, might be one of the worst songs on the album. It’s way too chaotic, overloaded with noise, and pointless energy; “OPM BABI” has the same problem—both songs are straight-up unlistenable.
The features on MUSIC are hits or misses. Future kills his verse on “TRIM,” and The Weeknd and Carti both deliver really good lyrics on “RATHER LIE,” making it one of the most mesmerizing songs on the album. Sadly, a lot of the features either outshine Carti or just make the songs worse.
One of the biggest issues is the messy tracklist, which makes the album feel random instead of flowing smoothly. On top of that, DJ Swamp Izzo’s excessive ad-libs and name-drops become unbearable, making already chaotic songs even harder to sit through.
As of right now, MUSIC is the number 1 debuted album, as well as number 1 on the Billboard making his album album of the year. Although his new album earned over 139 million first-day streams, as well as having the biggest debuts on the global Spotify chart, MUSIC feels like a bunch of unfinished ideas put together. Some songs will stick, but most will be forgotten—or chopped up into 15-second TikTok clips. As someone who loves Die Lit and Whole Lotta Red, this was a letdown. I’m giving MUSIC a 5/10—it’s definitely not worth the 4-year wait.
If you want to check out the best songs, I’d go with “RATHER LIE”, “HBA”, “EVIL J0RDAN”, “K-POP”, “WE NEED ALL DA VIBES”, “RADAR, CRUSH”, and “GOOD CREDIT”. Those are the gems; otherwise, it’s a disappointing album.
On March 25, 2025, Playboi Carti dropped a deluxe to Music called ‘Sorry 4 Da Wait.’ In this deluxe edition, Carti added four new songs: “2024”, “DIFFRENT DAY”, “BACKR00MS”, and “FOMDJ”. “2024”, “DIFFRENT DAY”, and “BACKR00MS” were all popular and loved leaked songs before he launched the deluxe.
All these 4 songs are gems and overpower Cartis’s MUSIC album.
This deluxe is proof that quality over quantity is always the better option. I would give Sorry 4 Da Wait 10/10, these songs show Carti’s true potential and how good of an artist he is.
