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How Did Playboi Carti’s ‘Music’ Score the Biggest Hip-Hop Debut of the Year?
This week's Five Burning Questions looks at the stellar performance of Playboi Carti's 'Music,' which seems to confirm his newfound superstardom.
Jason Lipshutz: When Whole Lotta Red was released, Playboi Carti was still a rising hip-hop talent with a squelchy sound and jabber-jawed delivery; now, he’s one of the biggest artists in popular music, responsible for a sub-genre and dozens of rage-rap imitators. Songs like “Evil J0rdan,” which finally receives a proper release years after surfacing online, demonstrate the head-banging relentlessness of his style and will continue soundtracking freak-outs both solo and communal, but “Rather Lie” sports a catchy Weeknd hook, reined-in Carti verses and a recognizable verse-chorus structure. If the album continues to fade at this rate, and doesn’t generate some kind of late-breaking hit, it could still end up the mid-decade version of Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake: a set whose remarkable early performance was more about catching up to the artist’s prior popularity, rather than actually taking them to that next level.
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