#2 - Playboi Carti - "Stop Breathing," "On That Time," and "JumpOutTheHouse"

It's like watching a method actor go so far into his role that he forgets who he is.

Dec 23, 2021

I’ve been studying Playboi Carti for ages. I remember his first experiments in plugg beats and instrumental psychedelia, circa 2014-2015; his early forays into sputtering ad-lib mayhem, 2017; the glorious “Cancun” leak and his gradual devolving into the baby voice, 2018, which became squeakier and screechier until it regressed into a fetus voice, 2020. It seemed that he’d reached peak gibberish — how could he sound any weirder? What can he do with ad-lib mosaics that he hasn’t already?

But then he took it further on Whole Lotta Red. It got even more disintegrated.

You could call his style here aural anarchy — music that sounds like it’s lost complete control of itself, syllables and synthesizers flying at random in a disturbing constellation of chaos. Moving away from psychedelic, lush instrumentals, Carti opted for destruction, howling over beats so hard they could knock an old man’s toupee off. Vocally, he teeters between two modes — going all-out, practically shredding his vocal cords, and a kind of breakneck gulping, gasping for air; on a track like “Stop Breathing,” it sounds almost like he’s dying. At one point, he trades rapping for simply wheezing — “haa, hhh, hu, hu, hu, hu, haa.” The track’s title functions both as a goofy statement about how girls can’t help but hyperventilate hornily when he takes off his shirt (it’s also a Gucci interpolation) and an audience imperative — mosh so hard you pass out.

If “Stop Breathing” was Carti’s death rattle, then “On That Time” is him in the afterlife as a shrieking hellhound. When Carti dropped this track live in Rochester, the crowd full of sweaty Syracuse boys, girls in vampy halter tops, and 18-year-olds wearing flannels over “ROCKSTAR MADE” t-shirts started thrashing like they were possessed by a Ouija board spirit. It’s one of those songs like “RIP” with an instant bass drop — no build-up, no tension, just a beat that feels like you’re getting pummeled in the face and full-on vocal violence. Carti’s increasingly oxygen-deprived flow makes the monosyllabic hook — “D, R, A, C, O, D, R, A, C, O, DEE, RRR, AYY, CEE, OH!” — so exhilarating to scream out during a concert. I was too busy yelling the letters at the top of my lungs to scan other folks’ expressions, but it seemed like people were unleashing everything they had, bodies smashing against bodies.

“JumpOutTheHouse” features Carti’s most unnerving vocal performance of his career. He begins with a baby voice that feels somewhat tame by his standards, and slowly ramps it up. Around 40 seconds, he suddenly starts squawking like a mutant Caillou throwing a temper tantrum. There’s something almost theatrical about this — like we’re watching a method actor go so far into his role that he forgets who he is.

I thought it was interesting how heavily Carti concealed himself at his own show. The whole time, huge clouds of special effect smoke puffed through the auditorium so that even when I was only feet away from him swaggering around the stage, I couldn’t discern his features. He was practically invisible in the fog, a phantom. Plus, he wasn’t rapping much, he was just letting his songs run and ad-libbing noises — squeaks, screams, coughs, cries, single syllables that reverberated across the venue walls. In a way, this physical ghostliness mirrored his obscure, dissipated musical presence. On Whole Lotta Red, he offers up barely any details about himself or personal reflections. What sticks in our skulls after we listen isn’t information about him, it’s the shards of weirdly enunciated words, the mindlessly addictive mantras that provide a temporary release from the world’s stress and sadness. Carti knows better than any rapper right now that it’s not about what you say, but how you say it, about the textures you can forge when you bend and twist your voice beyond recognition.

“Stop Breathing” — produced by ssor.t, Lukrative, and F1lthy.

“On That Time” — produced by Ojivolta and F1lthy.

“JumpOutTheHouse” — produced by Richie Souf.

Check out Playboi Carti:

https://soundcloud.com/playboicarti

The list:

#20 - aya - "what if i should fall asleep and slipp under" and "Emley lights us moor"

#19 - rrodney - Jersey club remix of Trippie Redd ft. Playboi Carti’s “Miss the Rage”

#18 - aghast - “thas wut i do” (prod. lungskull & wavebird)

#17 - Yves Tumor - “Secrecy Is Incredibly Important To The Both of Them”

#16 - kaystrueno - “PRETTY B!TCHES NEVA DIE”

#15 - kurtains - “spawn”