Since exploding onto national scenes following years spent as a protege to Atlanta’s Awful Records, he has – with just an album, a mixtape, and hordes of unreleased loosies to his name – pushed music’s translucent boundaries to a point where one side calls him the greatest rapper of all time, and another refuses to address him as a rapper at all. In many ways, Playboi Carti represents a continuation of what rebellious modernism Zappa’s heyday bred. Because of this – in all cases Zappa and beyond – one of few sole common elements was that denial of old-heads made such movements that much stronger. Although these are, for the most part, inaccurate exaggerations of what the typical rock star was (and still is) deep down, when a concerned parent saw something like Altamont on television, the very worst was what stuck. Along with dozens of other long-haired spokespeople for a rapidly shifting musical climate, the Mothers’ frontman was everything that they didn’t want their children to be: drugged up, horny, and disillusioned with life. Yet, for the older generation, Zappa’s antics were representative of the opposite. This represented a dream for the vast majority of young listeners then: the lifestyle he purported, one with zeroes in categories of both fucks given and consequences garnered, was a dual epitome of swagger and success. Before audiences mostly comprised of countercultural post-hippies aged 21-and-below, he swaggered across the stage, monologuing about weed, improvising tales of high school diplomas rolled up and smoked, and digging at the education system with every opportunity he got, all the while surrounded by scantily-clad groupies strutting seductively at his side. On any of the December nights in 1973 that Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention played the Roxy Theatre in Hollywood – a series of concerts that would become Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) – Zappa, for about an hour and a half, was the most interesting human being on Earth. No matter which side of the spectrum you find yourself on, Jordan Carter is one of few rock stars in the rap game. To the concerned parent, Playboi Carti is the Antichrist. To the disgruntled teenager, Playboi Carti is Jesus.

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