Mumble rap promotes capitalism

In this introduction to his late 2020 offering, Whole Lotta Red, mumble rapper Playboi Carti seems to respond to surplus outlined earlier in the work of Fred Moten with his constant, repeated refrain of “Never too much” over a rumbling, distorted beat. We as an audience are left to speculate, “what is never too much?” Perhaps this refers to bling, the unending desire for material gains that has become synonymous with hip hop. In the music of Carti and his peers, there is never too much material value, but there is also never too much affective value. To quote another of his peers, Lil Uzi Vert, “money got longer, speaker got louder, car got faster,” in this world they’re crafting, there is never too much money, there is never too much volume, never too much speed, never too much sexual arousal, never too much intoxication. Shoota begins with a lone muted synthetic keyboard, slightly touched in reverb. The texture is familar but foreign, more resembling a dinky Casio patch than an immaculate recorded Steinway. The descending piano figure repeats twice before Philly’s Lil Uzi Vert enters the stage, warming up his voice like a supercar revving its engine. The performance requires preparation. As Uzi croons “Nooow is my time,” pizzicato strings dance forwards and backwards, creating a Bacon-eqse portrait of a deranged mechanical orchestra of digital automatons playing in tandem. The sound reminds me of confetti or an explosion of fireworks; prismatic and celebratory, a flurry of vivid color. The texture disappears as soon as it comes, leaving us back with the sole keyboard texture, filling an imaginary stadium or auditorium. Uzi’s voice enters again, in the form of an overdubbed Maaly Raw’s producer tag, the pitched up and playful “That-that-that-that-that-that be Maaly Raw '' that bounces around from left to right the speaker. A producer tag is like the opening credits to their film. The most successful trap producers are known by their tags alone, their tags are greeted with roars of excitement at festivals and in clubs. They become a part of the song’s lyrics. Another key role of the producer tag is to signal where the drop of a trap production is. Often, trap songs begin with a drumless sample or composition, until the producer tag appears often in the first few seconds of the beat with the arrival of an 808 bass and digitally sequenced hi-hats, snares, cymbal, and additional synth textures. This moment where the 808 comes in and fills out the rumbling low-end of a song is called the drop. The distortion of an 808 is overbearing, raw noise, a low pervasive rumble that becomes the defining feature of a space. High volumes and large speakers are essential for these invocations into sonic space, this ritual sonic intoxication that envelops one’s body. The rumbles are inescapable in a club, a car, a studio, or a pair of headphones. Trap music creates and claims space, its potent low frequencies are expansive. They push through thin apartment walls, bound through the doors of busy nightclubs, and pour out of Ubers parked at red lights. My encounters with these 808s fill me with deep pleasure, both affective and historical. The rich resonances vibrate my body like a massage: they rattle the seats of my car and close up my throat. The 808 is heard as it is felt, it shakes the body.