Nearly two years ago, at a listening party for Offset’s solo album SET IT OFF, the rapper previewed a song with Playboi Carti christened by the fan community as “Rock Out.” It’s pretty great. Carti goes in over a bouncy, conservative-for-him beat full of the bluesy melodrama you’d typically hear on Rylo Rodriguez tapes, gleefully rapping “rock out rock out rock out rock out” as a gun-reloading sound is spammed.
For some reason, the song wasn’t cleared for Offset’s album, seemingly forever doomed to unreleased limbo and Carti snippet threads. Until last night, when it somehow appeared, sans Offset, on a new album by none other than NAV. Officially titled “UNLIMITED,” it’s still cool, but less effective due to the new sum of its parts; NAV is nowhere near as propulsive as Offset was on the original, and an overwrought Weeknd outro drains the fun out of it. I still have no idea how or why songs are passed around the music industry, so I came up with a handful of scenarios that might’ve led to NAV getting ahold of this rare Carti feature:
1. The song was wagered in a bowling match between Offset, Quavo, Travis Scott, Don Toliver, 21 Savage and NAV; NAV handily destroyed everyone.
2. NAV connected Offset to his plug in Toronto in exchange for it.
3. After reading this tweet that attributed his albums to different races, Carti wanted to reach more Indians so he took the song from Offset and gave it to NAV.
4. NAV agreed to ghostwrite Offset’s next song on the Spider-Verse soundtrack.
5. Most likely, while recording MUSIC, Carti revisited NAV’s 2015 SoundCloud loosies and was so moved that he sent this song to him.
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