The cult movie that inspired Playboi Carti’s entire image
“Tell ’em I’m a vampire!” said Playboi Carti in an interview, highlighting how the Atlanta rapper’s image and artistry have been closely associated with the creatures of the night for nearly a decade.
Carti’s music, artistic vision, fashion and stage presence all have a distinguishable vampire influence. His passion for the mythical creatures stems from the 1987 cult classic The Lost Boys. The film follows teenage brothers Michael and Sam, who move in with their mother to a small town in California. Tired of their boredom, the brothers go out and meet a group of bikers, with Michael falling in love with Star. The bikers turn out to be a gang of vampires, and to save Michael from his fate, the brothers must fight off their new threat.
The movie was released at the height of the ‘Satanic Panic’ and the increasingly influential punk and mental scene. The Lost Boys draws on that aesthetic and moves away from the literary depictions of coffins and gothic castles commonly associated with vampires. For Carti, the film became the pinnacle of his fascination with vampires and his drive for artistic expression.
During an interview with Complex, Carti stated that he connected with the film due to the fashion and lifestyle. He shared how he paused the movie and “played my music over it, and it looked so crazy”. He expressed, “I thought, damn, I wanna look like that. That’s me. That’s Playboi Carti, a vampire on a dirt bike. Flying. Laughing and shit. The fangs, my grills. Long hair, dreads. Rock star shit. You know what I’m saying? It’s fire.”
In many ways, it’s the rebellious nature of the movie that resonates with the rap star. From the fashion of the leather jackets, the dark and distressed clothing and especially the eyeliner mirrors Carti’s aesthetics and music videos.
The chaotic and supernatural atmosphere in the movie reflects his persona and stage presence as well. Onstage, his energy is undeniable, and his fans look virtually possessed. Carti creates an atmosphere where mosh pits and tapping into your wildest energy are essential. Similarly, The Lost Boys features the vampires letting loose in the clubs in California, which blurs the line between supernatural and realistic. Carti’s fans, the ‘vamps’, are almost infected by his music, summoned by their self-proclaimed ‘King Vamp’. As such, he pushes the boundaries of hip hop as he fuses the rap genre with a vampiric invention.
Whole Lotta Red, released in 2020, embodies the vampiric aesthetic with tracks like ‘Vamp Anthem’ and ‘King Vamp’ serving as a nod to the gothic, specifically Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Both Carti’s album title, lyrics and Stoker’s Dracula symbolise ‘red’ as a catalyst for blood and violence. The cover features the bleeding ‘red’, a black and white portrait of Carti, alongside an upside-down cross necklace.
The visuals pay homage to the iconic Slash punk music magazines, emphasising a sense of rebellion and ‘unholiness’. This draws parallels back to the aesthetics and context of The Lost Boys as well, where the unsettling nature of the album demonstrates Carti’s imagination and vampire inspiration that stretches beyond the references to become an entity of its own.