There’s no collective in America commanding the youth like Opium is right now. Somewhere between cold nonchalance and masochistic vitriol lies the Atlanta-based neo-punk brigade, a coven of rappers and producers who mold piercing distortion into organized bedlam. When Playboi Carti launched the label with the release of 2020’s Whole Lotta Red, he was already readying his first protégé.
Allow me to reintroduce Ken Carson, patient zero of the Opium Plan, one of the world’s biggest rappers born in the 21st century. Ascending from Carti fan to Carti confidant, the diamond-grilled ruffian dethroned bars and rhyme schemes in favor of bludgeoning skulls with his bloodshot delivery. He’s an avatar for Opium’s dark, irreligious imagery, often seen with a St. Peter’s cross around his neck. Last year, he tatted a pentagram on his chest and commissioned cover art of a buck 50 scar on his face. As his embrace of the macabre has grown tighter, Ken Carson’s headstrong synthplay has become bitterly malevolent. It’s a mutated extension of Red’s vampiric lure that Opium stans can’t get enough of: The Brooklyn listening party for his 2023 opus, A Great Chaos, was packed with disciples howling newly released songs word for word. “Opium aesthetic, yuh, type shit,” Ken boldly remarked on that album.
More Chaos is Ken Carson’s affirmation of his influence. He is aware of his standing in rap culture now, almost to the point of spoofing the demon he’s posturing as. “I’m the lord of chaos/I got the moshpit in control,” he declares after an alarming techno breakdown splits the album open. For better or for worse, he’s right. Opium’s lurid approach to sound and aesthetics has the kids in a headlock; at any rap festival in the past five years, you’d find fans draped in all black with painted nails and pants so baggy they can’t see their shoes. They’re rowdy and inconsolable at Opium sets, flailing and shoving even before a DJ takes the stage. It’s all by design—Carti, Ken, Destroy Lonely, and company have distilled the symbolism of metal and the ethos of punk into an apolitical soup. There is no underlying message—this is rebellion just for the sake of saying “Fuck 12.” These are our Sex Pistols: The music at its best is rabid and freakishly exhilarating. At its worst, it exposes the empty core of its depravity. An environment that cultivates something like More Chaos is one where drug binges and violent misogyny go unchecked.
“How you mourn? What you gon’ do when that pain hit?” Ken Carson asks on “Xposed,” the album’s second track. “I been rockin’, I been ravin’, I been ragin’.” The scope of Ken’s catalog can be summed up by these words alone. With each new album (More Chaos is his fourth), the hedonistic impulses reach new extremes. It’s reflected in the lyricism, but it’s the sound palette that really gets pushed to the brink. The trench warfare of 2023’s “Hardcore” and “Lose It” are superseded by the hellish whir of “Xposed” and the double-sided clamor of “LiveLeak.” Hall-of-fame snippet-turned-banger “Money Spread” warbles like a spaceship with a corrupted motherboard. Ken’s best work relies on this kind of raw urgency and Migos-level repetition that I wish this album had more of. “LiveLeak” is nearly as addictive, translating the crunchy, lo-fi elements of the snippet to the final mix: Mangled synths and snares, Mario Kart trills, and gruff 808s rumble like Goliath’s footsteps. Egged on by a calamitous beat switch, Ken raps like he’s a button-press away from a tectonic shift. When the mood softens later in the album, he loses the edge that makes these tracks so enticing.
