New Music – Paint The Town Red

Man… for a record that seemed to have the entire world on standby just waiting to even sniff out some of the snippets that floated around the internet, Whole Lotta Red splits favored opinions like a red sea.

Playboi Carti who rose to fame from his incredibly adaptable style and easy to follow beat patterns that combined both psychedelia and the obscure. Whole Lotta Red feels as if it is trying to appeal to less of the fans from the beginning, and is striking a stronger pose into being music strictly for the car with subs and speakers surrounding the 808 strikes like they were 50-foot potholes.

Opening with “Rockstar Made,” Carti is off to a great start with this slugfest of an instrumental from Jonah Abraham and F1lthy, “Rockstar Made” is simple but memorable at the least. The hook and chorus that has a slightly baby-voiced Carti screaming “Uh, never too much, Uh, never too much. Rockstar made, rockstar made” with ad-libs cutting through the speakers similar to switchblades.

The amazing thing about Whole Lotta Red does not come from the production or even the delivery from Carti, what’s crystal clear is the understandable diversity within opinions that surround the record. From the first initial listen on Christmas, it was no doubt disappointing and that has to be because of the immense hype that surrounded the album. There was no single way that Whole Lotta Red could live up to the expectations that fans and even just passers of his music surrounded the record with.

But now, Whole Lotta Red as over an hour of music, 24 total tracks, and among those 24 total tracks, there might be six to seven pieces that are iconic and will live on. But as for the other technical 17 or 18 tracks, they just do not have that same iconic ability that Carti produced on his self-titled Playboi Carti or on Die Lit.

Even within a week of both of those records coming out, it was easy to correctly identify and begin to rap along to some of the tracks, and if the production was just introduced especially on Die Lit, those names would pop into mind. Now with Whole Lotta Red, even after around 20 listens through the past week and even listens far after this writeup is done; I continue to find myself diving into those six or seven tracks then falling back into the previous works.

Pieces like “Stop Breathing,” or “Vamp Anthem” are built for a live setting and Carti will create a conquer of sound on those moments. “Place” calls back to the Pi’erre Bourne production that has those warping synths and samples where Carti is charismatic and shows reminiscence to the Soundcloud era.

Whole Lotta Red is a better record as a project being played from start to finish rather than skipping to individual tracks. Not containing the same emotional draw of Die Lit or the ugliness of Playboi Carti, Whole Lotta Red still has this tractor beam effect where hearing a “Vamp King” scream over rap makes me smile but still wish for more ultimately.

Listen To Whole Lotta Red Here!!! – Spotify/Amazon/iTunes