Playboi Carti – “Ketamine”
Right now, Playboi Carti exists in some strange, uncharted realm of stardom. Today, Carti is featured on the #1 song in America, Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Carnival,” and you could argue that he’s the main reason that it’s #1. Last month, Carti performed at the Grammys with Travis Scott. But these landmark moments haven’t made Carti’s own career any less chaotic. His planned arena tour, repeatedly postponed at the last minute, still hasn’t been rescheduled, and he continues to crank out new music by just throwing track up on YouTube or Instagram, with no plan for official release seemingly in place. Today, he’s done it again.
For months now, Playboi Carti has been building up to the release of his new album I AM MUSIC by throwing messy, wild-eyed songs — “Different Day,” “2024,” “BACKR00MS,” EvilJ0rdan” — up online without making them available on streaming services. It’s like he’s leaking his own stuff. Today, Carti has posted an Instagram video for another new song called “Ketamine.” It’s two hook-free minutes of Carti doing yelpy free-association over an apocalyptically eerie beat, and it slots beautifully into the end-times confusion that surrounds Carti.
The video that accompanies “Ketamine” is just as vivid and engrossing at the song itself. It’s Carti, masked up and armed with guns, in a run-down and seemingly abandoned house. For much of the time, it’s Carti and a shirtless guitarist who looks like he plays in a crust punk band. (It seems to be Mark Williams, one half of production duo Ojivolta. They’ve worked with Carti many times.) The two of them wild out together in a room with nothing but a bare mattress on the floor and a knife hanging from the ceiling. There is no guitar on the song. Check it out below.
