Playboi Carti – “EvilJ0rdan”
Atlanta rap star Playboi Carti is apparently gearing up to release his new album I AM MUSIC, and he’s doing it in the most chaotic way possible. Carti’s arena tour, which was set to begin last weekend, has apparently been delayed for a second time, and he’s putting out a barrage of new songs without making them available on streaming services — almost as if he’s leaking his own music. But many of those new tracks — “Different Day,” “2024,” the Travis Scott collab “BACKR00MS” — have been instant viral smashes. Last night, he dropped another one on Instagram.
Carti’s latest is called “EvilJ0rdan,” and it’s a tense two-minute bugout with no lyrics. The beat is simple and direct, with heavy 808s and eerie string-shrieks that wouldn’t have been out of place on a ’90s horrorcore track. Carti dances over that instrumental, delivering his lyrics in a high-pitched rasp that’s somewhere between his old baby-voice squeak and the lower register that he’s been using more recently. His lyrics are plenty quotable: “My life is out of control/ I’m telling you, nobody safe,” “this not a rockstar phase,” “they can’t put me in no genre, baby, ’cause I changed the game.”
Carti has made a video for “EvilJ0rdan,” but like most of his recent clips, it’s murky, low-budget, and homemade. In this one, Carti and friends dance around a kitchen and a driveway and look cool as hell. This one will probably mostly be remembered for Carti wearing a hat with two points that look like… devil horns? Fennec fox ears? I don’t even know. Check it out below.