YO PIERRE YOU WANT TO COME OUT HERE?!

*MILLY ROCKS*

A Playboi Carti concert is not for the fainthearted; it requires much physical strength, stamina and endurance. Someone even threw up and had to be escorted out of the crowd – it’s that level of intensity. Nobody informed me how much pain I’d be in the morning after his show but it was worth every wince.

The DJ’s set before Carti came on stage was impecable – it was nearly two hours of constant mosh pits and turning up. You would have thought that by the time Carti graced us with his presence we would be subdued and exhausted? That was far from the case! The stage lights turned a fiery red, two rather strange naked wax figures suddenly appeared on either side of the stage and the intro to Location began playing. We couldn’t see Carti but we knew he was coming. After the final “Yeah” on the track, the beat dropped and the Playboi himself appeared just in time for us to scream in unison “You cannot hop in my car/Bentley coupe riding with stars”. 

I was completely unaware of how expansive Carti’s catalogue is as I’m only really familiar with the tracks off his self-titled debut album and a few others. The crowd knew every track word for word and some of the songs I had never even heard. This seemed to defy the rhetoric that these new school trap rappers only have a few songs to their name.   Carti’s catalogue was long enough to give us just short of an hour’s set. In his set he dropped WokeUpLikethis*, Broke Boi, DoThatSh*t!, and Magnolia – TWICE! Magnolia was unquestionably one of the songs of 2017 and hearing it live twice can only be described as an experience.

Carti isn’t the most refined performer – his backing tracks carried him through the show whilst he every so often rapped a quick 8-Bar, and his crowd engagement was pretty minimal. He said very little to us, bar his favourite line “Open that b*tch up!” – this was him commanding us to make a larger and more lethal mosh pit. However, Carti has such die-hard and energetic fans that he doesn’t have to do much in order for them to have a great time. Perhaps it was this electrifying energy from the crowd which led him to stand on top of DJ’s booth and perform WokeUpLikethis* as if it was his new stage.

The show was lit, turnt, fantastic – I could continue listing adjectives but I think you get my drift. You don’t have to be the biggest Playboi Carti fan to go to a show and enjoy it, that was one of the great things about his performance. However, you do need to have a lot of energy. It’s been nearly a week since his show and flashbacks of it still excite me.  I thoroughly enjoyed his show and would even opt to see him again. A special thanks to Cash Carti for a great concert!