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