yt, rock and roll, Playboi carti.
YT performing at LoccedIn in Birmingham, early 2024.
On 6th September 2024, Dom Corleo played in Brooklyn for his New York date of the Under My Influence tour. Opening for Dom was underground rapper YT who performed a set of three songs, those being Pocket Full Of Money Got My Trousers Falling Down, the TikTok-viral Black & Tan featuring the ever-present Lancey Foux and the newly-released MVP by Fimiguerrero, on which YT is featured. Building up to the song playing, YT played an electric guitar intro, popularised (and perhaps debuted within the hip-hop scene) by Playboi Carti, which hyped up the crowd for the song to drop. This intro lead me into thinking about the gradual popularisation of electric guitar intros to hip-hop songs at concerts, but more generally about the effects of rap borrowing elements of rock and how that has changed the way modern hip-hop is created and performed.
It’s entirely impossible to dive into this topic without first mentioning (at length) Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red. Released Christmas Day in 2020, Playboi Carti’s third studio album was initially met with polarising reviews, as many fans of his previous work were put off by the aggressive, repetitive and acidic nature of the album. Carti had very clearly drawn strong influence from rock & roll, with the Slash Magazine inspired album cover and electric guitar lead in the album’s first song, Rockstar Made, being a strong indicator of Carti’s artistic evolution since Die Lit and demonstrating where his inspirations lay for this body of work.
The majority of songs (particularly on the first half of the album) are similar, often with electric guitar leads or other rock inspired elements, and are energetic, aggressive, and boisterous. I admit when the album released, I didn’t understand its direction whatsoever, and felt the more typically ‘Carti’ songs were far more enjoyable than the distinctly rock-inspired ones. However, where this changed for most people (and what seems to have lead to the albums vibe being that of a modern classic rather than a failure) is after Playboi Carti’s numerous performances of the album in 2021.
After seeing videos of his King Vamp Tour and Lollapalooza performances I realised what this album was meant to evoque. The piercing warning sirens before songs like Stop Breathing and On That Time and Carti’s energy on the stage created an environment I had never seen before at a hip-hop concert - the expectation was that people would mosh and rage to every song, with far more hardcore and passionate audiences than I’d seen pre-Whole Lotta Red. Of course other artists in the same musical sphere had music for fans to rage to, notably Travis Scott, but Playboi Carti created a whole new type of energy within live hip-hop events.
What really set this apart, for me, was the guitar intros to his hardest hitting songs. His guitarist, Oji Volta, would be beside Carti for a vast majority of his performances, and his electric guitar shredding would seem to pierce through the smoke and sirens in the build up to his songs as moshpits opened and fans prepared for the song to drop. It’s elements like these that combine to authentically combine the hardcore energy and live performance standards of heavy metal and the roster of artists and sounds found within hip-hop, to create what seems to have now become its own genre. Next to use these elements in their music (to my knowledge) were members of Carti’s own label, opium, such as Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely, to similar effect with fans.
Over the last few years, elements like these have become standard in the ‘underground’ among production and concerts, but to see an added guitar intro to a song by YT at that event in New York was a strong reminder of how far the ‘underground’ genre of music has come. The UK has typically seemed to play by a different set of rules and norms when it comes to our underground music and most popular themes sonically, so to see something popularised elsewhere incorporated so seamlessly by a UK-based artist served, to me, as a checkpoint in how underground concerts are evolving internationally.
- Samuel Khan