On the first day of COVID-19 Christmas, my vamp king gave to me …
One Whole Lotta Red!
Hailed as a modern-day classic, Whole Lotta Red became rage-rap’s Bible, cementing Playboi Carti’s head-thrashing, scuzzed-out electronics and baby-voiced goblin gargles as the subgenre’s gold standard. It’s an album that takes the communal, claustrophobic club mosh atmosphere of 2018’s Die Lit and constricts it. What’s left is a pit of bloodied, crystalline permafrost where a vampiric, uber-wealthy and uber-horny entity squeals mantras through diamond fangs, holed-up and sunless. The beats and hooks are flashier by comparison, accelerating the supercharged, repetitive punk song cycle to its limit. This is why every song has become prime TikTok product — you could slice and dice Whole Lotta Red any which way, and it will still retain its icy shimmer and earworminess. “Stop breathing!”, “Don’t talk to me!”, “I’m way too high” and “This love don’t feel how it felt when we started” have soundtracked an isolated, chronically online, cave-dwelling generation’s journey in — and out — of cyberspace.
Yet as prolific as Whole Lotta Red has become, the vamp king behind its creation has remained an enigma. His next album MUSIC was teased through a cryptic Instagram post here or there; or an announcement of some album which would get scrapped Kanye-style; or the meager helping of a feature rapped in either high-pitched goblin mode or Future mode; or the teaser single “ALL RED.” The 30-track megalodon landed at 7 a.m. on a Friday to many an anguished listener, who immediately went on social media to post a number out of 30 signifying the number of tracks they added to their playlists (mine was 15/30).
Because of Playboi Carti’s diehard fanbase and widespread online appeal, I took to the streets to interview the vamps of Ann Arbor on what they thought of the project. The answers will shock you!
Daily Arts Writer Zachary Taglia can be reached at ztaglia@umich.edu.
Videographer & Editor: Maximilian Thompson
