Playboi Carti - Die Lit

For seven years this record existed only as a stream. A vinyl pressing was announced back in 2018 and then quietly killed, leaving one of the most influential rap albums of the decade as the rare landmark with no physical life at all. In 2025 that finally changed. Die Lit arrives on wax for the first time, and it sounds every bit as unhinged as it did the night it appeared without warning.

Surprise-released in May 2018, the album pushed the minimalism of Carti's debut mixtape into something faster, louder, and considerably weirder. Pi'erre Bourne executive produced, and his woozy synths and hyperactive hi-hats give the record its permanent sugar-rush feel across nineteen tracks and fifty-seven minutes. "Shoota" pairs Carti with Lil Uzi Vert for the purest euphoria in either rapper's catalog. "Love Hurts" brings in Travis Scott, "Poke It Out" hands a verse to Nicki Minaj, and Skepta, Young Thug, Chief Keef, and Bryson Tiller all pass through without slowing the momentum. Carti himself is barely rapping in the traditional sense, using yelps, echoes, and ad-libs as instruments in their own right.

It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and went gold, but the numbers undersell it. Die Lit became a blueprint. The rage sound that dominated rap through the 2020s, and the entire SoundCloud-to-arena pipeline that followed, traces back to these grooves more directly than to almost anything else from the era.

This first-ever vinyl pressing from AWGE and Interscope spreads all nineteen tracks across four sides. A long overdue physical edition of a record that shaped everything after it.