Atlanta, GA · rage · trap · hip-hop

Playboi Carti

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Stripped rap down to ad-libs, texture and menace, then built a decade of imitators out of the wreckage — the vampiric centre of modern rage rap.

Playboi Carti was born Jordan Terrell Carter and grew up in Riverdale, a suburb of Atlanta, attending North Springs Charter High School. He first rapped as Sir Cartier, posting music to SoundCloud as a teenager and performing in strip-mall parking lots with friends before quitting a planned basketball path to focus on music.

His style favors cadence, ad-libs and texture over conventional verses. His 2017 self-titled mixtape, released after deals with Awful Records and then ASAP Rocky's AWGE imprint, reached number 12 on the Billboard 200 and produced the widely circulated 'Magnolia' alongside 'Wokeuplikethis!' featuring Lil Uzi Vert.

Die Lit followed in 2018, debuting at number three and pushing further into distorted, high-tempo production. Whole Lotta Red, released at the end of 2020, leaned into a harsher, punk-adjacent sound and a higher-pitched vocal delivery. It became his first number-one album and has since been ranked among the genre's best by Rolling Stone.

In 2019 he founded Opium, a label and collective that has signed Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, Homixide Gang and fellow ASAP Mob member ASAP Nast. Much of his own catalogue has been produced by longtime collaborator Pi'erre Bourne.

Recent years have brought high-profile guest spots, including Travis Scott's 'Fein,' The Weeknd's 'Timeless' and Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign's 'Carnival,' his first number-one single. His third album, Music, released in 2025, gave him a second consecutive chart-topper. Live, his shows favor stripped stage design and heavy low end over note-perfect renditions of the records.

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