It has been 1018 days since Playboi Carti released his third album, “Whole Lotta Red”. Albeit, it hasn’t been that many days since we’ve heard new music in general from him – he was just on Travis Scott’s “Utopia” – but still, it has been 1018 days since he released his own solo music, despite his consistent promises of new music “soon”.

While I enjoyed his song with Travis, and his feature on The Weeknd’s “Popular” eventually grew on me, none of it really sounded like the Carti I am used to.

I was shocked when Playboi Carti announced his “Antagonist” Tour; I got my hopes up that an original album would be released alongside it. Admittedly, I got excited, signing up for the pre-sale and buying my ticket before sales opened for the general public. I spent $200 on tickets for the Vegas show, but that was okay; I was finally seeing King Carti in real time. 

And then he postponed the tour. 

Instead of seeing him in September, the tour is now “rescheduled” to January. But considering his history of promising new music, yet never actually releasing it, I unfortunately don’t trust him enough, and decided to refund my ticket instead of claiming it for January.  

People have a tendency to unconsciously idolize celebrities without consequence. Forming connections to an artist’s persona, music, and style is normal, and I even encourage it if it makes you happy. But supporting an artist without recognizing their faults, like Carti’s fans tend to do, is not the right thing to do.

Blind devotion to any celebrity hinders the fan’s ability to critically think about whether their favorite artist’s music is actually enjoyable, or if they are simply keeping up because they’re idolizing them. In the case of Playboi Carti, his music is truly enjoyable to me— but his constant misleading of music releases is not.

It’s not that only Carti’s fan base behaves like this, but it’s because I’ve been a part of it that I believe they can be used as a bigger example. This type of unchecked idolization can only be harmful, whether in the case of monetary loss like the money spent on postpones concerts, or the time spent overanalyzing any and all of his (or his producers, other members of his label, literally anyone who has ever been associated with him) social media activity. 

The plethora of Playboi Carti or Opium “update” accounts on Instagram use every little photo or piece of information related to him or anyone associated with him to come up with arguably insane reaches about new music releases. These further add to the wildfire of Carti lying to his fans- half of the time, he doesn’t even personally make any claim to release new music, it’s just his fans spinning something out of nothing once again. On top of that are the “CONCEPT” posts that create fake music collaborations between Carti and other artists. This type of content, while it can be entertaining, is just another way to mislead fans, especially when the “concept” aspect isn’t revealed until the end of videos, or at the very bottom of captions.

This is all normal fan behavior, but it shouldn’t be. It may not seem all that serious, and maybe these social media accounts are annoying at best, but these actions should make all of us reevaluate how we think about celebrities. Wanting to listen to his music, keep up with his social media, even wanting to dress like him, is all completely fine. But the intense devotion to every move of his, or to absentmindedly keep holding out hope for him to finally do upkeep one of his promises should be criticized. 

At the end of the day, I will probably repurchase my ticket for Carti’s concert when the date is closer. I still listen to his music, and I honestly always will. But, I’ve stopped getting overly hyped about his “potential releases” because I know in the end, I’m more than likely going to end up disappointed. His fans’ tendency to mislead each other only causes more problems, and while Carti is my favorite liar, I think its time we take him off the throne.