Keep your nose clean and stick to the bag
December 19, 2025 1:49 pm
Ken Carson is a unique Atlanta rapper who has exploded in popularity in the last few years. To get a better idea of who this fascinating artist is and how he got here, let’s look into some of his past releases and career moves.
Carson got his career off to a monumental start by meeting legendary producer TM88 and joining his music group 808 Mafia in 2015. In 2017, he began releasing on Soundcloud, and steadily gained popularity and notoriety from there. In 2019, he was noticed by fellow Atlanta rapper Playboi Carti and signed to his label, known as Opium. After releasing 3 EPs, Carson released his first album, Project X.
Artists’ debut albums often give a great insight into their influences and core style. Project X contains influences from hyperpop, with glitchy electronic synths and trap drums, and brings Ken’s distinctive, choppy flows onto the scene for the first time. Along with Ken’s personal style, we begin to see the Opium style come into play as well. The presence of distorted 808 basslines and heavily autotuned vocals, along with punk-rock influence, solidified this album as one of the premiere Opium projects.
His career would continue to progress as he released X and Xtended, gradually introducing darker cuts that are reminiscent of Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red such as “Murda Musik” and “MDMA”, both featuring Destroy Lonely, a longtime friend and collaborator of Ken’s, who is also signed to Opium. This gradual infusion of darkness would culminate with 2023’s A Great Chaos (read our article about it here), which I believe represents the completion of Ken Carson’s development into an Opium artist. The project features extremely bass-heavy and mosh-ready tracks such as Fighting my Demons, Hardcore, and Me N My Kup. Additionally, A Great Chaos was received with much greater critical acclaim and success than his past projects, skyrocketing his career forward.
Finally, we get to More Chaos. At a pinnacle of Ken Carson’s career, this is a very important album for him, and in my opinion he definitely rises to the occasion. Ken does an excellent job of keeping true to his personal style while fully integrating into Opium. The production style is similar to A Great Chaos, but with a more multifaceted approach. Ken goes beyond the normal “rage” sound and more successfully integrates his early sound with the mosh-pit style of A Great Chaos by including more melodic cuts, and tracks that combine the trademark heavy bassline with more introspective themes. He utilizes some incredibly talented producers we’ve seen before such as F1lthy, who appeared many times throughout Carti’s I AM MUSIC, Starboy, and Outtatown, both of whom we’ve seen throughout Ken’s discography. Throughout the project, Ken also upgrades his lyricism, using clever references to Opium members and his own discography, as well as plenty of funny one liners and creative rhyme schemes as described in the following tracklist.
A melodic beat highlights a fairly slow and digestible flow which is incredibly satisfying to listen to.
2000 contains an effortless flow from the X-man with some clever lyricism:
“Get the fuck out my way, I’m on the way to a billion dollars
Whеn I made my first million, I instantly got a million problems”
Chaotic beat with an aggressive flow from Ken.
Ken Carson is an incredibly dynamic and multifaceted artist. When we look at his career in its entirety, we can see how his style has changed and evolved since joining Playboi Carti’s Opium. He does well maintaining his individuality while contributing to Opium’s dark, rockstar-like sonic aesthetic. Likewise, his lyricism was impressive over the course of More Chaos, while also being quite entertaining, engaging, and creative. The production of his album also was dynamic, taking notes from Opium and Carti’s recent releases while maintaining Ken’s distinctive hyperpop style from his older music. I really enjoyed listening to Ken’s new release and I’m excited to see how his style will continue to evolve in the future.