Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red

Carti dropped this on Christmas morning 2020 with four days' notice and blew up his own sound in the process. Whole Lotta Red is his second studio album, and it arrives having thrown out everything that made Die Lit a crossover hit. Gone is the pillowy melodic trap. In its place: distortion, shrieking, and a vampire rock star persona that Carti commits to with total seriousness.

The record is loose to the point of sounding unfinished, and that is the design. "Rockstar Made" opens by driving straight into a wall, and across 24 tracks and just over an hour Carti favors chants, ad-libs, and pure texture over verses and hooks. F1lthy and Art Dealer handled the bulk of the production, with Pi'erre Bourne, Wheezy, and Maaly Raw contributing, while Kanye West served as executive producer and turns up on "Go2DaMoon." Kid Cudi appears on "M3tamorphosis" and Future on "Teen X." "Sky" became the slow-burning breakout, a song that found its real audience more than a year after release.

It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 100,000 album-equivalent units, Carti's first chart-topper, and split his fanbase down the middle on impact. That argument is settled now. Whole Lotta Red built the template an entire generation of rage producers and rappers has been working from ever since, and it was certified Gold in 2022.

This double LP spreads all 24 tracks across four sides via AWGE and Interscope. The record that cracked rap open, on wax.