On September 13th, 2024, Playboi Carti celebrated his 28th birthday by releasing his first solo track on streaming services in nearly four years. In seven days, “ALL RED” has amassed over 44 million streams. For context, the record for first week streams for a rap song was set this year by Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”, with 55 million streams.
“All Red” was first discovered by Carti fans in 2022, when a 90 second long video was hacked from the iCloud account of one of Carti’s producers. It was the first known instance of Carti’s new deep voice, which he officially displayed for the first time on Travis Scott’s FE!N later that year. In contrast to FE!N, this song has Carti’s vocals pitched down digitally. The song is rumored to be from when Carti was still mastering his new technique. Despite some criticism for sounding like his contemporary and collaborator Future, Carti’s song has been received mostly positively.
It marks Carti’s highest debut on Spotify charts. After just one day, it was first on the US Top 50 and 3rd on Global Top 50. While Billboard has yet to release their new Hot 100 list, assuming they don’t pull something shady like they did with Travis Scott and Sabrina Carpenter last month, Carti will likely earn his first solo number 1 song.
Despite building up in late 2023 and early 2024 through a series of Instagram and YouTube videos, as well as a strong run of features, Carti fans knew it was too good to be true. As per usual, Playboi Carti never released the album. Not only did he stop his roll out, he also canceled his world tour. Now, one week after the official release of his first song in 4 years, and his official announcement of his next album, I AM MUSIC, fans such as myself eagerly await the return of Playboi Carti.
