Hey @playboicarti….

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[6.00]Wayne Weizhen Zhang: As a thought experiment, just for a second, imagine what this would sound like if Carti perfectly enunciated every word. (Trippy, right?) And then, imagine if every other song was enunciated just like Carti is doing here. (Even trippier.) Conclusion: enjoyment of “@ MEH” is negatively correlated with the amount of words that you can actually understand.
[7]

Tobi Tella: Bohemian Rhapsody for dudes who get high before their finals and ask “where’s my hug at?”
[3]

Julian Axelrod: Playboy Carti raps like a caffeinated toddler over beats that burst like shaken up soda bottles, so naturally his songs explode with energy. But exhausting as that could be, Carti’s spent years stripping his bangers of  excess weight to deliver pure, uncut endorphin rap. “@ MEH” is one of his most streamlined transmissions to date, a dizzying rush of 8-bit birdcall and buzzsaw synths that wind Carti back up when his string runs out. I don’t understand a word he’s saying, but parsing his bars is a fool’s errand. It’s thrilling just to trace the curlicues of his voice, feeling it warp and snap and double-knot around your synapses until it burrows into your brain.
[8]

David Moore: Remember when new songs used to get released to file-sharing sites in 30-second snippets that looped over and over again in some kind of conspiracy to… I mean, what was even the goal there? Was it simple trolling, or could you “follow” people on Limewire or whatever? I don’t remember! God, I really can’t remember. What would someone have thought of this song showing up on Napster in 2000? In that sense it is “futuristic,” I guess, how no one in 2000 would have had any idea what the hell this was or who it was for. It reminds you that this is the future, the one we couldn’t have imagined. This song would have made Kid A sound like Shania Twain. (Shania Twain sounds weird now. It’s so much! Remember when you could just do that? Be Shania Twain?) Why is this song making me think about the year 2000 so much? Is it because time itself has become a shapeless loop, making “@ MEH” the perfect song IN THESE UNCERTAIN TI — wait, hang on, is this what Playboi Carti usually sounds like? This sounds wrong, right? I don’t remember him sounding like this? There’s so much I can’t remember! The song just started again for the tenth or eleventh time in a row since I started pecking at this blurb — I deleted a whole section on the digital blorrrrrrps of a poorly-ripped MP3 and when people used to record from their soundboard so you heard their IM notifications throughout the song, but hey I guess it’s back in now — and I still haven’t parsed a single word in this song. I don’t have any idea what this song is, it’s like I’m hearing it 20 years ago. What will things be like 20 years from now? What are things like now? Have things always been like this? No… no, things were different, once.
[6]

Oliver Maier: The sugar-rush beat combined with Carti’s most incomprehensible performance yet makes for a magical first few listens, but “@ MEH” wears thin after a while. It would be easy to chalk this up to gimmickry, but that’s not quite the issue; it’s more that the track is circuitous in a way that feels less purposeful than usual for Carti. Normally he drives in donuts until he can see stars. Here he just sounds a bit lost.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The word “meh” is really a modern linguistic marvel. It just drips its own meaning, from sounding like an incomplete thought itself, to being an emphasis of “eh” to begin with. It suits this song, which is honestly just incomprehensible yelping, which defeats the point of yelping really. More than anything, it just feels monotonous. You could cut from like a minute in to two minutes in with a mouse click and there’s a good chance you wouldn’t notice a beat or word out of place.
[4]

Jibril Yassin: The allure of Playboi Carti is watching him strike that perfect note found between carefree and vacuous. “MEH” manages to sound more confident than repetitive. Surrounded by all these playful blocks of sound, Carti comes across as a menacing trickster; his voice cuts through to tease the listener before returning to the ether. It’s not immediate the way his best tracks are but it confounds and rewards you all the same.
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: I’ve liked his contributions to other’s records (Solange, Tyler, the Creator), and I like this, even though I’m not sure I “get” it. The toy piano-ish track is hella earworm-y, and Carti’s voice is kinda just another instrument on the record. Sticky.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Carti’s incomprehensibility gambit is starting to lose its luster — here, he doesn’t do anything all that interesting with baby-voice, and there’s even less use in trying to get meaning out of the deciphered words. But, sonically, Jetson’s bass and Neeko Baby & Deskhop’s jittery synths serves as a perfect companion to Carti’s style. “@ MEH” sounds wired, but the spark is only temporary.
[6]

Nina Lea: I can’t remember the last time, or any time, I listened to a rap single and immediately thought, “bubbles!” Because that’s what “@ MEH” creates — a sonic landscape unlike any I’ve heard in the genre. The xylophone synths float upward like shining soap bubbles in the light, reflected in the way that Playboi Carti aspirates the p’s in “police” and “pussy.” There’s a texture to this soundscape that feels rare and startlingly pleasing, like the first time I ate jellyfish and rolled it around on my tongue, or the small jelly orbs at some boba shops that pop when you press them between your teeth. How strange, how new, how rippling with delight.
[8]