A garage, an SUV and a near-empty office floor: that is the whole set of “Backr00ms,” the Playboi Carti and Travis Scott video that is pulling fresh eyes on YouTube nearly two years after it first appeared. The clip sits on Carti’s own channel under the title “BACKR00MS” FT TRAVIS SCOTT SEXISDEATH INDIANA420BITCH, a run of capital letters that reads more like a mood board than a credit list.
The song was never a normal single. Carti dropped it on January 1, 2024, as a YouTube-only release, and it stayed off streaming services for well over a year. Streaming fans had to wait until March 25, 2025, when it was added to the deluxe version of Music, his third album.
How a New Year’s Day drop was built
The rollout was pure Carti. On the morning of release, the experimental musician Blackhaine, who also dances on Carti’s stage shows, appeared on the rapper’s Instagram story to announce new music with Travis Scott that same day. A stretched parental advisory sticker hid his face, with “Monday 9:30” stamped on the screen as the release time.
It was the fourth promotional track for Music, after “Different Day,” “2024” and “HBA,” the song first titled “H00dByAir.” Each one arrived without warning, mostly on YouTube and Instagram, which turned Carti’s own channel into the main place fans went to hear the album take shape.
Credits list Carti and Scott as writers alongside producers Cardo, Ojivolta and Duce. The track runs 2 minutes 40 seconds and was released through AWGE and Interscope.
Why the name and the look match
The title points to the Backrooms, the online horror idea of endless, fluorescent-lit empty rooms that spread widely in 2022. The video leans into it. It is lo-fi, shot in a garage beside a hulking SUV, and then cuts to a mostly empty office where Carti throws cash. Nothing is polished, and that is the point: the clip looks found rather than produced.
Carti also uses a higher-pitched take on the deep voice he first tried on “Fein” and “2024,” and Scott keeps his verse low and steady. The beat feels hollow and echoing, which suits a song named after a maze of empty rooms.
The Carti and Scott track record
This pairing has history. Before “Backr00ms,” the two had already worked together on “Fein” from Scott’s 2023 album Utopia, plus “Love Hurts” and “Green & Purple.” Scott has stayed busy since: he is on Future’s new single, covered in our story on Future’s Ya Hit with Drake and Travis Scott, and he is booked for the Grand Theft Auto VI launch festival in Miami with Cardi B and Kodak Black.
Our take on the clip
Badiyaa’s view: “Backr00ms” works better as a video than as an album track, because the visuals finish the joke that the title starts. On streaming it is one song among many on a long deluxe album. On YouTube, framed by that shouty all-caps title and the bare garage, it feels like an event, which helps explain why fans keep coming back to the upload instead of the playlist version.
The critique is fair, too. The verses are, by design, vague, mostly about money and women, and anyone hoping for a big Scott showcase gets something quieter. The video also offers little beyond its single idea. Still, as a time capsule of how Carti built Music one surprise post at a time, it holds up.
Fans who want the original can find it on Carti’s official YouTube channel, where it has lived since January 1, 2024; the streaming version sits on the Music deluxe edition released March 25, 2025.
Further reading
Image: Wojciech Pędzich, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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