Song of the Day: Playboi Carti, "Pop Out"

I have a hard time with Playboi Carti. He seems like he’d be a really rough hang, and the predominant narrative about his output in the past 18 months has been how strangely difficult it has been to hear new music by him. But a big part of me admires just how intensely he has managed to stick to his guns and how much he has bent the mainstream to his deeply chaotic approach.

I really liked his last album Whole Lotta Red, which dropped on Christmas 2020 and sounded like every internal rage- and hopelessness-fueled freakout I had during the year we all spent trying not to go outside. He has been teasing his new album for months, and it’s had a handful of release dates that nobody, especially Carti himself, has taken seriously. Even though he’d made a lot of tracks I like, he had become a dude I rolled my eyes about.

At long last, he dropped his new album this past Friday. He had been touting it as I Am Music but the official title is simply Music even though the album cover reads I Am Music. It has the same hang-ups I have with a lot of big-ticket hip-hop albums in the modern era: It’s way too long, and it’s so soaked through with guest spots that sometimes Carti seems like a featured player on his own record. But there are still a handful of tunes that are undeniable in their ability to capture a certain level of fuck-you-all energy that can only be described as punk.

“Pop Out” is the opening track on Music, and while it doesn’t really set the tone for the record, it still operates as a bracing statement of purpose. Over a grinding industrial slurry of a beat, Carti bobs and weaves in and out, often incoherently but never without purpose. “Pop Out” is a totally fine version of what Carti does for the first minute, and then he flexes his true gift: the ability to escalate energy and tone while still staying in the same general vibe space. You can’t teach charisma, but Carti has it and he knows how to use it.