Playboi Carti is already taking over 2024 with new music. To kick off the new year Monday (Jan. 1), he dropped “BACKR00MS,” featuring Travis Scott, exclusively on YouTube.
The nearly three-minute visual is already No. 1 on Trending, with 4.4 million views in 17 hours at the time this article was published. It’s the second video the rapper has dropped on his YouTube channel, following “2024,” which has nearly 21 million views in two weeks and is No. 7 on Trending for music. “2024” is produced by Kanye West, Earl on the Beat and Ojivolta.
“BACKR00MS” arrives six months after Carti and Scott linked up on “FE!N” from the latter’s Grammy-nominated album Utopia. They performed it together during Scott’s Utopia – Circus Maximus Tour stop at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium. During his pit stop at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Scott explained why he performed “FE!N” 10 times during his Barclays Center show. “Man, I have the best fans in the world and I go off the energy they give me, and they were wild that night, and so I just got even wilder,” he said. “BACKR00MS” is Carti and Scott’s fourth collaboration, following “Green and Purple” (2017), “Love Hurts” (2018) and “FE!N” (2022).
Last month, Carti began surprise dropping songs exclusively as music videos either on the @opium_00pium account, including “Different Day” and “H00DBYAIR,” or on his YouTube channel. At press time, all four songs are currently unavailable on DSPs.
The songs seem to be a part of his upcoming third studio album, which is tentatively titled Music or I Am Music. It’s been three years since Carti dropped his last album, Whole Lotta Red, via AWGE and Interscope Records. Released on Christmas Day 2020, the 24-track project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.