Jordan Carter. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, moved to New York City at the age 18 where he linked up with A$AP Rocky and the A$AP Mob to become who he is today, Playboi Carti. Alongside Kyle, XXXtentacion, Ugly God, Madeintyo, Pnb Rock to name a few, he is one of the selected freshman on the new cover of XXL Magazine. Carti differentiates himself from the rest by having a mentor along his side: a current artist signed to a major record label. Looking back on how many of major artist started out today; they had the help of others. Eminem had Dr. Dre, Kanye had Jay-Z, Meek Mill had Rick Ross, Drake had Lil Wayne… etc. Carti has A$AP Rocky. Which is incredible to believe. Rocky only has two studio albums under his belt, a couple of mixtapes and is already part of the elite in hip-hop. Still, Carti was signed to Rocky sometime around 2015 before Carti even had a mixtape out.
In the era where quantity over quality is followed, ie. Future, Gucci Mane, Migos… Carti is one of the few who releases music once in a blue moon. His whole career was basically built on just snippets of music. There was so much hype around his self titled debut album...yet he did not have any previous full body of work. Most of the 2017 XXL Freshman have their own independent movement without the help of any major artist or label. Look at Yachty, most people would not know that he and the Migos are on the same label and even share the same manager, Coach K. And you would think Migos being an industry juggernaut would be out promoting Yachty in their albums, going to his shows, pulling up together at award shows; but instead they let him do his thing. Without Migos or the help of QC, Yachty would still be in Sprite and Target commercials; he’s got that much buzz. It gets to the point where the label needs the artist more than the artist needs the label.
Although Carti has been making music dating back to 2014, he’s extremely meticulous as of what he releases to the public. With only a few songs and a ton of snippets, Playboi Carti already had a good following before dropping Magnolia. Looking at the numbers: Carti sold around $22K in album sales plus streams in his first week despite having a previous project or a ton of promotion. Before Carti dropped his album, he was sort of an enigma. Although he has Twitter and Instagram, he is not active in both those media platforms and does little to promote himself. After, Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti performed in Times Square for VFiles LOUD, during audience questioning, Carti was asked when his tape was dropping. In which Uzi exclaimed “YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A TAPE HOW IS YOU FAMOUS?" The two have collaborated before, once on Uzi’s mixtape and twice for Carti’s self titled debut. Playboi Carti was set to perform in Montclair, NJ on August 16th, 2017. The performance of the Wellmont Theater of August 16th reminded me of how a live performance of a rap show is performed nowadays. The music Carti makes is reminiscent of the Atlanta trap scene. Fathered by Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy, and T.I, trap music becomes the strip clubs of Atlanta. And typically if you're in a club, it’s dark, loud, claustrophobic and therefore, making a mistake onstage is not as noticeable. So most of the time it is unnecessary for the rapper to be actually rapping the words live. They decide to basically lip-sing the whole song and the Carti concert was no different. Since Playboi Carti has a lot of movement during his performance, it’s difficult to voice out all the words correctly, so the fans do it for him. On the other side, since there is a lot of movement, it's easy for the performer to entertain and move the crowd a lot better. Carti got extremely close to his audience and demanded there to be a mosh pit where the crowd was at. His performance was exhilarating and for the encore, he brought out Lil Uzi Vert out to perform with him (Uzi had a show at the Wellmont a few days ago). Ultimately, Carti is for his fans. While waiting in line, I spoke to other concertgoers and how they have been following Carti when his rap name was still Sir Cartier. They would rather wait two years of hiatus than for Carti to drop some underwhelming music.
