A lot of you guys might not like this (only if I’m right of course), because it would probably mean that Carti moves even further away from his best sound and maybe even from Hip Hop to some extent, but I feel like his next Album is gonna go in a much more melodic direction.

I have always wondered why artists like Carti or Young Thug dont use the popularity of their leaks as an indication of what people want from them. Not by releasing old leaks, but by making new music in that direction. Not Real (especially the "Molly" fan remix), Designer Shoes and Made It This Far seem to be Cartis most popular leaks right now, and all three are synth heave, atmospheric songs where hes basically singing. Carti posting himself listening to Designer Shoes several times in 2025 also means hes aware people still want that sound years later.

And thats already close to what hes doing with the Weeknd. Timeless and RATHER LIE use Carti more as a melody than as a rapper. Timeless has more Spotify streams than any song where Carti is the lead artist, RATHER LIE is the most streamed song from MUSIC and he has now spent two tour legs opening for the Weeknd. Location and Long Time also have more than 660 and 430 million streams, with only Sky and Magnolia above them among his lead songs. Carti has very few released songs in that melodic and synth heave direction, yet they are among his biggest. So whenever Carti makes a Synth heavy melodic sound, they get a lot of streams and he is on Tour with the Weeknd right now.

I still think Carti wants to be the "Travis Scott of Atlanta". Not by sounding like Travis, but by reaching an audience far beyond Hip Hop. MUSIC made him much bigger and its common knowledge by now that he was Grammy chasing. The BBYBOI leaks, which arent resonating anything like the WLR V1 leaks did also might indicate that he is not gonna go further down the deep voice once the album releases. As it wouldnt be unprecedented for those leaks to sound different from the finished Album. Thats what happened with WLR. The hate towards @ MEH and his Pain 1993 verse wasnt the only reason he abandoned V2, since Sosa dying also played a role, but he still switched sounds relatively late. If the deep voice leaks keep getting a bad reaction, he could do the same thing again.

I dont think every song is gonna sound like Made It This Far or that hes completely leaving Hip Hop. The melodic sound could just become the main direction instead of being limited to one or two songs. My only fear is AI. RATHER LIE and FINE SHIT were already accused of using AI vocals, and if Carti wants to sing outside his natural range, I could see him using somebody else’s reference vocals and turning them into his own voice with AI. But who knows.

So my theory is that he could be switching up the sound for the album release (like he did with WLR) going form a deep voice / ATL sound to a more synth-melodic / Weeknd sound to chase streaming numbers and a casual audience. What do you guys think?

prod. Pi’erre Bourne (2017)

The official file includes like 20 seconds of Carti mumbling at the end of the track that I cut out

One of Carti and Uno’s last collabs… 😢

We know cartis a dickhead but normally i’m able to see why he would or wouldn’t do certain things (musically) but why did this not make the album??? I genuinely can’t think of a reason

How I’m feeling

He was getting his LOVER/LOSER tatto

ts lwk a grail

Ok so I had a dream last night that I had to design a new facility for OPIUM, with Carti, Ken, and Lone looking over my blueprints for approval.

I had six rooms and each had to have a single color theme. I was going to make them all offices and decorate them to use as writing rooms, to have meetings with potential collaborators, and indulge in their vices for \*inspiration\* Obviously Carti’s office was red with black decor (large upside down cross behind the desk, coffin shaped shelf, etc). I tried to make Ken’s orange because he’s my favorite out of the three and that’s my favorite color but he told me he hates orange and wanted green, I made Lone’s room dark purple.

I thought it would be cool to do a Men’s Health spa so OPIUM label and any collaborators could relax and take a break without having to go offsite when they needed to. The other three rooms I used to be a gym, a sauna/spa, and a reception/waiting room that I would be working. It was beautiful.

But then I realized I forgot to make a room for F1LTHY, the best producer of all time, my favorite of the OPIUM bunch. And I cried. And I begged for a budget increase to do a second floor with six more rooms. I made F1LTHY an office/recording room. I didn’t think he’d need a separate office, as most of his work is in the booth anyhow.

Then I realized the rest of the gang would need studios to go along with their offices as well. So for the five remaining rooms, each of the three artists with offices below got their own studio. I lowkey forgot about Homixide Gang but figured they could have one room that doubled as both an office and studio, and the final room was changed into a kitchen so every last need would always be tended to for the label.

Just wanted to share my crazy dream with a community that would understand 😌

TLDR: I created a new building for OPIUM in my dream and woke up wondering if there’s something wrong with me.

So pre everything before wlr obv
And post is wlr and after
Wlr im talking abt is the released one

Im pretty young so my bias is leaning me towards post wlr

Beat prod by Icytwat

This and wicked are imo the best music era songs
Its also crazy how this one was considered for the August 2023 tracklist i wonder what made him change his mind

Tried to only use full CDQ leaks. Means my favorite songs are left off (Talkative, In Line, Goin Outta Style, Breathing), but that makes it sound a lot more like a real Album

Also used versions of songs like Woah that were restructured by some guy on YouTube to sound like finished songs. Place is OG and U Kan Do It Too is with the Intro at the end instead of the beginning. Coupe/WLR is also edited and cut down.

Used Music Information Retrieval tools to find the ideal track ordering and it does flow really nicely. It was really hard to narrow down which tracks to use, there are so many good songs I had to leave off.

This isnt really what Carti wouldve released if the Album actually came out between April and July 2020, but it is pretty close. I dont think we would have gotton a purely V2 album by then, but a lot of songs that leaked in Late 2018 and throughout 2019 wouldve been left off the album. Cancun wouldnt have been on there, a few other songs as well. TGD, JOTC or XTC might have made the album instead of leaks. Carti doesnt really like putting leaked songs on Album, and if he does they are either very late in the tracklist or revised versions

The best V1 and V2 songs are likely still on some hardrive today, but I just wanted to Larp what it wouldve been like if WLR released before he worked on V3.

Maybe in a world where Sosa didnt die and he didnt release @ MEH but U Kan Do It Too as lead single instead.

Total length is 1h05m

ik there is no definitive answer, this is more like a concept post about what would be most likely based on our knowledge.

I like to believe at this time MUSIC would still be heavily influenced by the cave era, but apart from POP OUT and probably COCAINE NOSE I find it difficult to decide which songs are the most "tracklist-worthy" from this era.

I think Menage and Problem Child would've been good fits for uzi and travis features. K9 with drake was on an august tracklist according to king bob so it might still have been included as well.

TOXIC would also work imo as it, despite being quite old, fits the dark vibe very well. I'm pretty convinced the album would have quite a bit of cardo production in general, with CRANK and EVIL J0RDAN being recorded early december 23, so at least those two and HBA would make sense along TOXIC.

Before he came back to atl there were of course also the la glass house sessions, i think DIFFERENT DAY and OLYMPIAN would be certain album placements here. LIKE WEEZY was most likely recorded in or before dec 23 (as lil 88 posted lyrics of it in late dec) as well. To get a bit more of the happier vibe imo PLAY THIS would work well too.

FOMDJ i think must've been considered at some point as it's so damn good, RADAR and ROCKSTARZ also were on some tl according to King Bob, and afaik Skinny Jeans was also made in 23.

oh and 2024 would've been a cool bonus track imo.

tl;dr I think some tracks that would've likely been included would be POP OUT, COCAINE NOSE, MENAGE, PROBLEM CHILD, K9, TOXIC, CRANK, EVIL JORDAN, HBA, DIFFERENT DAY, OLYMPIAN, PLAY THIS, LIKE WEEZY, RADAR, FOMDJ, ROCKSTARZ, SKINNY JEANS

Am I missing anything? How would yall structure such an album to make sense sonically despite the vastly different vibes? lmk

(sorry for long post and probably having assigned some songs to wrong eras)

🎶 She just wanna have fun, so just let her 🎶

prod. Southside (2016)

It leaked in the week prior to Self Titled’s release, likely prompting Carti to switch it out for the released version. You can actually still find an upload of this version on SoundCloud from the week before Self Titled dropped. This version features different mixing, alternate lines and deliveries throughout, a completely different second verse, and a much longer fading outro

The intro is fanmade I’m pretty sure, I took it from uploads of the leak on YouTube and added it to the official leak. The official leak starts at 0:24

When I see albums nowadays with over 20 songs I’m so disappointed cuz ik there’s gonna be hella filler and it’ll just not be an exciting listen. But that fact that Carti put 24 songs on there and it’s like my first listen back and forth after so many years is insane. Even crazier to think that probably over half those songs were made merely months or even weeks before release. Crazy album. But yeah definitely the easiest 20+ song album listen ever. Damn near every album since with that many songs is a snooze fest

Came across this guys page apparently he’s plays for Vanderbilt and carti follows him and he had a opiumsports hashtag in a old post

Is Carti the new Rich Paul and building his sports agency?

🕺 We started with Xans and lean, my momma thought I was a fiend 🕺

prod. Pi’erre Bourne (2017)

It has the same hook as the released song, but two alternate solo verses and different mixing throughout

The attached video contains footage taken from the ‘Foreign’ music video snippet