Playboi Carti decided that Christmas Day is the day to give presents to all his fans rather than his own son Onyx as he released his latest album, The whole red lotta like Santa Claus doing his rounds. The rapper, from Atlanta, Georgia, split with his equally famous Australian partner, Iggy Azalea earlier this year but was previously reported to be on good terms with the rapper and model. Azalea also said that their son “Onyx was very loved by his father”. It looks like Carti may have jumbled up her priorities for the occasion, especially when you consider the sheer number of gifts. The whole red lotta it really is, and read Iggy’s subsequent comments on the matter.
Playboi Carti: ‘The Whole Red Lotta’.
Playboi’s eagerly awaited new album, his sequel till 2018 Die Lit, was beset by ongoing problems before it was released, not least of which were numerous leaked songs. The album he released in the end was definitely influenced by this as he tried to push his own boundaries. Carti has long been considered quite experimental but on The whole red lotta he went further and darker than ever in defining his sound.
The whole red lotta is a large block that spans 24 songs and includes performances by Future, Kid Cudi, and Kayne West. This is not an easy listen and does not let you in without extreme persistence, this is not a commercial or instant album. It mounts and is drawn from a string that can be heard throughout the album. However, this is one of the few redeeming features.
Dark and brooding decline make up most of the scores and arrangements on The whole red lotta challenging at times but it shows that Playboi Carti is more than interested in staying safe and repeating past glories. In his latest release, he has chosen a musical path that is sure to polarize public opinion. There is no easy in The whole red lottaincluding his concurrent single from the album, M3tamorphosis (Ft. Kid Cudi).
Some of the deepest bass lines you can imagine help make up the soundtrack for nearly all of Carti’s albums, and the differences between some of them are minimal. You can, if you’re streaming, flick between tracks without knowing where you’ve landed or where you’ve been along the way.
The previously mentioned cohesion works both ways, the tracks melt into each other without any of them standing out in particular. Ironically, the lightest track on the entire album is the last one, F33l Lik3 Dyin. Here, the hour-long album ends with a sample song by Bon Iver iMi and so it stands out as an anomaly among the other songs that Carti has included.
Maybe there’s a good album trying to get out of The whole red lotta. With some tweaking to be able to be half its size, some objections from the manufacturers and some rethinking this could work. As it stands, Playboi’s new album is a disappointing sequel Die Lit and certainly not the Christmas present we were expecting.
