Note: This article contains descriptions of alleged domestic abuse.
Ken Carson is resting his back on a pillow of money, two fat-ass stacks of dollar bills. At a sprawling recording studio in Buckhead, Atlanta, Ken—24 years old and riding the high off his 2023 collection of gothic headbangers A Great Chaos—grabs the TV remote, and flips through the channels looking for a horror movie to throw on. With every station he pauses on, he dishes out commentary. First up is Ghostbusters: Afterlife. “Shit, ain’t nobody scared of no ghosts in 2024,” he says, slamming on the remote. “Why they keep making them? They need to leave that shit alone! It’s all fake!”
Managers, assistants, and friends are circulating in and out of the room. They’re all getting their ducks in a row because, in a few hours, Ken will take the stage at the Coca-Cola Roxy for one of his homecoming stops on his A Great Chaos tour, the first major headlining tour of his career. At the beginning of next year, he will release his highly anticipated fourth album, More Chaos, which is still in the works. He’s wearing camo shorts, Balenciaga boots the size of a pair of Shih Tzus, and a black T-shirt that reads, “Dead on the inside but I’m still happy.” He puts his blonde-streaked locs into two pigtails. “On show days I only have to be performing for one hour so the other 23 hours I be chillin’,” he says, as his barber gives him a shape-up.
“What woke me up is Rob Zombie’s Halloween,” he says.
Do you like John Carpenter’s Halloween?
“Hell no! Ain’t no female battling Michael Myers,” he responds. “Jamie Lee ass would’ve been died in a Rob Zombie movie!” (Fact check: Laurie, the character played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the originals, survives her battle with Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s remake.)
During a commercial break, an MTV VMAs ad mentions a nomination for Playboi Carti, Ken’s superstar mentor and label boss at Opium, the enigmatic Atlanta-based clique of rappers and producers. “Fuck!” yells Ken, punching his fist into his palm, lighting up like a proud little brother at the sight of Carti’s name. Opium is revered by Carti truthers who treat his 2020 album Whole Lotta Red as the Bible, and denigrated by non-believers as a bunch of edgelords who come off as wannabe Satan-worshipers. The crew scans as underground but is now flirting with mainstream rap culture, thanks to their gold and platinum plaques, billions of streams, and an aura that any major rap or popstar would sell their soul to have. Out of their camp has come some of the most innovative and bold Atlanta rap of the 2020s (WLR and AGC), as well as some music that is straight-up uninspired gimmickry (Say hi to Destroy Lonely’s LOVE LAST FOREVER).
As call time nears, members of the Opium JV team—including Beno and Meechie of Homixide Gang, plus the well-known Atlanta photographer Gunner Stahl—pull up to the studio. Ken greets them with individualized handshakes that mirror that one Druski skit. The conversation in the room flows through Ken and is mostly about women (“I haven’t been blocked in a while,” Ken jokes) or clothes (Ken and Gunner break down the dimensions of his Balenciaga boots with the specificity of civil engineers). At one point, while Ken holds court, he grabs the two bricks of cash and tries to balance them on his shoulder, except he almost drops them, telling Beno, “Damn, I ain’t do it like Carti.”
Ken Carson might be the next great Atlanta rapper, or Ken Carson might be a parody of the next great Atlanta rapper. He made his name with Auto-Tune-coated, internet-informed rage rap that tried so hard to convince you that his rockstar ambitions had the spirit of the counterculture. His massive cult following of mostly dudes in their teens and twenties—a generation of young men brainwashed into thinking they are being persecuted by society—grew as his macho nihilism was seen as a rejection of the status quo and an embrace of taboos (satanic imagery, serial killers, D-list pop-punk bands like Metro Station). It’s not far off from the way the satirical rap group Niggaz With Hats, from Rusty Cundieff’s 1993 film Fear of a Black Hat, marketed wearing cartoonishly goofy hats as an act of rebellion to distract from the fact that they weren’t doing anything new.
Because what Ken was doing at first was really all vibes: the all-black dress code, the grungy photography, the cryptic social media presence. His shows are hyper-masculine live spectacles where guys still waiting for their beards to connect bump shirtless chests and supposedly impress girls by smoking a fuck-ton of weed. But then came last year’s A Great Chaos—a loud, boneheaded, maximalist recalibration of Whole Lotta Red’s male angst, which, as of September is certified Gold—that grounded Ken in a historic Atlanta lineage. Here was an album that made you want to dig deeper into who the hell this guy is and believe everything that Ken was trying to convince you of—that he is a new-generation antihero and not just another young rap villain getting rich off mimicry and misogyny.
At the venue, a Black SUV pulls into a parking lot, where Ken and his Opium crew—including a kid who barely could be described as a teen—pour out of the vehicle. They exit the whip in what seems like slow-mo, as if they’re doing their best to recreate Cam’ron’s entrance in the “I Really Mean It” video. The uniform is all black with upside-down crosses hanging from their necks. (Lightheartedly, it’s pointed out that I’m throwing off the aesthetic by not matching.) Somewhere in the Opium handbook I imagine there’s a bullet point that reads: Get attention from the internet by vaguely alluding to the occult. “She ask me, ‘Why my cross upside down?’ I told her, ‘’Cause I’m cursed,’” raps Ken on “Pots.” A few weeks ago he got social media riled up by debuting his new chest tattoo of a pentagram made to look like it was hand-carved into his flesh.
When I ask the group what the crosses (known as the Cross of St. Peter) and pentagrams mean to them, Isaac, a scraggly-haired 29-year-old Californian who’s the head of merch design, answers first: “Fuck It. Anti-everything. But it’s open to interpretation.”
Ken’s explanation gestures at some thoughtfulness. “Saint Peter felt less worthy than Jesus and I feel the same way. I’m no God so why would I come to you as if I am.” Then, he gets back into character: “My job is to piss motherfuckers off!”
Why is that your job?
“Because motherfuckers are retarded!” he says. “Like they never seen a scary movie?”
Backstage, security guards shouting into two-way radios clear space for Ken to bounce through the tunnel like a boxer headed out for a title fight, to face the sold-out crowd of half-naked bros, ATL Black kids wearing ripped skinny jeans, and white suburban teens decked out in Rick and Balenciaga. Inside the musty venue nearly every song off A Great Chaos gets treated like it’s the one everyone came for. Ken used to go to the trendy rap festival Rolling Loud and take notes on Carti and Travis Scott, and how committed they were to keeping their energy at 100 at all times. On stage, Ken’s jumping around on a two-story piece of scaffolding but is obscured by so much fog and mist that you can only see his silhouette. He has absorbed their showmanship and brand-conscious mystery in a way that straddles the line between student and imitator. His character only takes short breaks behind closed doors, when all the cameras are off.
More than half of Ken’s life was building toward his star moment with A Great Chaos. He spent years observing rap superstardom from the sidelines. He was born Kenyatta Lee Frazier Jr. on Atlanta’s Southside to a working-class mother who picked up jobs around town (driving a bus, helping out in a hospital). Ken was raised in the Christian church, alongside his older sister. “I used to sing in the choir. I’d be in there turnt, boy! I did speeches on Christmas, Easter, all that,” he recalls, with a big grin on his face. “But with religion you gotta be holy even when you leave that motherfucker. That’s why I can’t put myself into any specific religion. But I do have a relationship with God.”
When Ken was barely out of elementary school, his mom put him onto early Future tapes. His favorites were 1000 and Dirty Sprite. Sometimes he’d go down to the gas station and grab copies of homemade CDs that would pit Future against other artists like Lil Wayne and T-Pain. Soon, he started exploring the city on his own. “I was gambling on the block and I seen Ken in some nice ass Jeremy Scotts,” says Vision, a close friend and assistant of Ken. “We was older and he was like 13 but right in the middle of the action.”
Ken’s girlfriend around that time introduced him to Lil 88, a frequent contributor behind the boards on A Great Chaos, and the nephew of 808 Mafia’s TM88, who co-produced Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3” and is one of the most popular Atlanta beat makers of the last decade. At 15, Ken started to go with Lil 88 to TM88’s studio but he skipped so many school days that he was sent to a military academy. His stay was supposed to be six months, but he was kicked out after two for sneaking in a phone.
He remembers, “When I got home I just laid on the floor of my mama’s house for a month thinking about what I’m gonna do.” With Lil 88, he’d spend a lot of his downtime at TM88’s place, blasting music, usually Carti’s, from the beatmaker’s opulent speakers. He threw some of his own AutoTune raps into the mix until TM88 noticed and told him to get into the studio.
Through TM88, Ken fell in with Atlanta hip-hop royalty. “I met Ken at Thug’s house when he was like 14,” remembers JBans, a former rapper who blew up alongside Lil Yachty. “TM88 was Thug’s DJ at the time, so he’d bring Ken over there, and Thug fucked with him so hard to the point that Ken would just be over there alone.” Eventually, Ken was at Young Thug’s massive studio sessions, sneaking into recording booths when everyone else was too busy, and part of Thug’s crew during his almost nightly paid appearances at local clubs.
Do you miss those days?
“Hell nah! That shit looked fun but you had to be on point. Make sure you got that motherfucker on you! It ain’t your night!”
Around 2018, Ken started taking frequent trips to Los Angeles, staying on couches and in AirBNBs while he moseyed through clothing stores and studios. On one trip while staying at TM88’s crib, he ended up tagging along with the producer Wheezy right around the time he produced “Yes Indeed” for Lil Baby and Drake. “It introduced me to a different life,” says Ken. “Wheezy getting us steak and pasta every night! High as fuck every night! Niggas fucking a bitch while making a song!”
Later, at a listening party in 2019, Ken was with 808 Mafia’s Southside when Carti emerged from the shadows—the night ended with Ken and Carti in the studio together, bonding over clothes. “A week after that night I see Carti and he’s like ‘This is my new artist, Ken,’” says White, a San Jose-raised former assistant at the infamous clothing brand Vlone. Still a teenager, Ken was on his way to being the first official signee of Opium.
In early 2020, Ken was tinkering with a pyrotechnic rage rap sound with the Dutch producers Starboy and Outtatown, which turned into his EP Teen X, a trial balloon of sorts for the swag that would be Playboi Carti’s modern rap classic Whole Lotta Red. But when Ken began to release his own full-length projects, they weren’t nearly as fascinating. His early hits like “Rock N Roll” coasted off his association with Carti. I wrote in a review of his 2022 album, X, that the listening experience was like “being whacked with a slab of styrofoam.” I wasn’t sure if he was a real-life human or a product of the Opium lab made to pump out lightweight Carti songs during his lengthy hiatuses in order to keep their merch empire going strong. He was so transparently doing a schtick; downplaying his relationship to Atlanta hip-hop in an effort to be the rapper that goes actually I’m a rockstar. On X and his debut album, Project X, the punk and rebellious attitudes felt fraudulent.
But A Great Chaos is so gnarly that it makes you want to reconsider everything before it. The rage feels genuine. It’s a complete sensory overload: The beats are so relentless and overstimulating that it’s like being caught in a twister. Meanwhile, he nerds out, pulling from the rap that’s defined his city. “Fighting My Demons” is a Future-coded bulldozer. “Me N My Kup” is like a rocket strapped to mid-2000s Gucci. (He cites “Shirt Off” as an influence.) In the midst of that, Ken’s grumbling and wailing and hollering nonstop about clothes (“Shawty fell in love with my swag and now she takin’ off my Rick”) and drugs (“I been sippin’ codeine don’t give no fucks ’bout my liver”) and women (“I was fuckin’ on a MILF, she was 36”). It’s a lot of emotionally stunted senselessness, yet Ken’s voice, constantly fighting to not be drowned out by all the noise, is full of feeling.
But at the end of the day, it’s not all that deep for Ken. “I’m turnt, I’m not a fan of emotional shit, even with my own shit I don’t be tryin’ to get into it,” he admits. “I ain’t been through the most, so I can’t really relate. When I hear emotional shit I’m like ‘You got me thinking about being broke, I don’t want to cry. Damn nigga you supposed to be getting rich, what the fuck?!”
There’s also a mean-spiritedness to his portrayal of women across the album that’s shocking to even the most desensitized rap fan. “Now when everybody see that bitch, they like, ‘Oh there goes Ken Carson’s whore,’” he raps on “Singapore.” These moments snap you out of the album’s blurry fantasy. He’s going for this all-vibes, no-fucks-given energy blast, but lines like these remind you of the stakes of the fury.
Fuck it. Three nights, three jam-packed Ken Carson shows. I gave my life to Terminal 5 in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen in order to immerse myself in the Opium craze. It was like being in a Groundhog Day loop, where each night started out the same: the Halal cart outside the venue had a speaker system strapped to it blasting A Great Chaos in its entirety. In line, there were a bunch of teenagers wearing generic Mother’s Milk-style rap tees, Rick, and Opium merch that said some bullshit like “Vamp Life” and “Bad Bitch Pussy For Lunch.” Usually security was on the manhunt for a kid underage drinking; I ran into one with the curls of a young Justin Timberlake, who tried to pay off a guard that was attempting to kick out his friend for pounding Twisted Teas.
Inside the stuffy venue, drunk kids were falling over themselves and doing photoshoots that mimicked the flamboyant poses of Carti and Ken. I overheard multiple conversations about vape addictions over the three nights. I saw a boy get swept away by security for lifting his phone above his head and broadcasting a hardcore porno to everyone behind him, to an eruption of cheers.
The moshpits to Ken’s set were sweaty and intense. By concealing himself behind the fog, he forced the crowd to pay more attention to the thrashing of limbs happening on the dancefloor. One bald mid-twenties man wearing a stylish polyester body harness caught my eye, as he directed the swarm of drunk teens through the mayhem. He told me he is a brand ambassador for an organization that pays avid moshers to wear their gear. He was born in 2000 and lives in California and previously he traveled with Insane Clown Posse though he found them “old.” Now he and his boys spend a lot of time traveling the country on the hunt for the perfect moshpit like the surfers do waves in The Endless Summer.
For aspiring and veteran moshers it was clear to me that Ken Carson had replaced Travis Scott as the ultimate high. At the concert, tacked onto A Great Chaos songs were rave-ready extended intros that added to the spectacle. One night, after the performance, I ran into a group of five teenage guys, two shirtless, who looked like they just finished an Ironman. The next day each one of them was moving to different parts of the Northeast for their freshman years of college. Wistfully, one explained what the show meant to them, “Tonight was the last stand for the boys.”
On a tour bus parked in between a Hyatt and a shopping complex in Richmond, Virginia—an intersection that feels like it could be anywhere in middle America—Ken sits cross-legged on a recliner wrapped like a burrito inside of a fluffy pink blanket. He’s chatting loudly with Gunner on FaceTime about a video shoot, waking up JBans who was knocked out on the sofa. His unit of a security guard, Dre, lumbers in and hands him a plate of chicken tenders.
“What the fuck is this teen drama y’all niggas watching!” snaps Ken, his pentagram tattoo visible. “It’s Friday Night Lights,” replies Vision, though it is actually One Tree Hill, an episode where Gavin DeGraw performs. “I am not watching no teen drama with six niggas in the room!” Ken reasons, gnawing on the tenders. “I need to watch somebody catch bodies!” He snatches up the remote and clicks play on a generic horror flick. “I wouldn’t even watch no teen drama with my girl.”
Together, the group does a lot of daydreaming. Isaac wants to take his clothing brand to the next level. JBans is building a studio in Miami. On Ken’s mind is getting to that final tour date, a performance at Rolling Loud in Thailand the night before Thanksgiving. “I know they gon’ save me a plate,” he says to Vision, rubbing his hands together, as he visualizes making it home for an Atlanta holiday season.
The tour has been so nonstop that Ken is in a race to finish More Chaos, the album he hopes will bring him a step closer to being spoken about in the same breath as his Atlanta big 3: Future, Thug, Carti. Ken grabs his comfort pink blanket and locks in. It’s 3 P.M.; he records until the sun goes down.
Of the few More Chaos tracks I heard it’s not far off from the sound of A Great Chaos, but pushed even further. The grunts you can hear on songs like “Me N My Kup” have turned into all-out heaving and there’s more emphasis on the bludgeoning take on the vintage trap sound. “Atlanta pushes you, you gotta be on your shit early. You got random niggas in the city who look like the most famous niggas in the world and they junkies,” says Ken. He beams when talking about his city, whether the topic is Gucci mixtapes or Atlanta’s culture as a whole. “You can’t even be the coolest nigga in your high school out there.”
Were you?
“Fuck no!”
It’s noon in mid-October on the third and final leg of his tour. A blunt is rolled by White to be passed around the small shared space of the bus, which has electronic doors, two bathrooms, six bunks, and Ken’s master bedroom where an unidentified woman is holed up for all three days that I live with them. Their daily routine is: smoke, fire up one slasher after another, survive on junk food, Lunchables, and Gatorades. Every now and then, Ken and Isaac throw together a sandwich containing funky flavored Lays chips and a slice of ham on un-toasted white bread with mayonnaise. The only music that is played is old Young Thug (straight off the iPhone speaker). When he’s feeling inspired he goes into a makeshift studio on another bus to record More Chaos.
Sometimes Ken is petulant and bossy. Sometimes Ken dissociates, covering his face with his locs, as he endlessly scrolls or stares at graphic, violent internet videos. (He has an obsession with gore; throughout my time there he can’t wait to see Terrifier 3.) Sometimes Ken is crudely funny, with hypotheticals for days: “If I was a junkie I’d be walking around naked, going, ‘Oh you weren’t worried about me before, now it’s your problem too.’” His friends seem unbothered by the mood swings, possibly understanding that they form a protective bubble around him, so he has nothing to worry about other than being Ken Carson.
Sometimes when I get him alone, I ask him a question he doesn’t like and he gets pissy.
How does it sit with you how white the crowds are at some of your shows?
“Why the hell would you ask that?! I don’t discriminate,” he says, sucking his teeth. “Why are you even thinking about that?”
Do you ever try to rap about your insecurities?
“Hell no! I think I have no insecurities!”
Later, I bring up two reported allegations of Opium members beating women. Playboi Carti was arrested after allegedly choking his pregnant girlfriend. (In a statement to Pitchfork at the time, Carti’s lawyer said the musician “was falsely accused” and that “this case will be dismissed without any prosecution or litigation.” The case remains pending, a representative for Georgia’s Fulton County Superior Court recently told Pitchfork).
In August 2021, Ken was arrested in Florida after an alleged incident with his girlfriend, who told police at the time that Ken “attacked her physically by tossing her around the room,” according to a police report, leading to “a cut to her right ear, a small cut to her nose, and a bruised hip.” The next month, state attorneys deemed the case “not suitable for prosecution.” The one misdemeanor domestic violence battery charge against him was dropped and the records were cleared. (In a statement provided to Pitchfork, Ken’s publicist wrote: “The allegation against Ken Carson was later withdrawn, resulting in the case being dismissed. Ken would like to make it clear that he did not engage in any misconduct, and he is focused on moving forward.”)
There was a leaked video reportedly taken that same night in which the police questioned and then arrested him—I ask him about how it feels that it is now part of how the public views him. “Motherfuckers on this Earth think they know it all,” says Ken, shrugging his shoulders. “You can’t define nobody off of a video situation. You can be a hero in someone’s life and be a villain in the next motherfucker’s life.”
It’s hard to think about the Opium crew without these stories of alleged violence on my mind. Their personas seem derived from the unruly and edgy rockstars of the past. “I’m Ken Carson, I’m bigger than the law, I ain’t going back to jail,” he raps mockingly on “Rockstar Lifestyle,” and you can picture him screaming that to his sold-out crowds of overwhelmingly male stans. It doesn’t even feel like he has much to say about rock music outside of this stance. “It’s about pushing the boundaries and doing whatever the fuck you want,” says Ken when asked what being a rockstar means to him, though the only band he can name that he’s inspired by is Green Day. “Putting your own back against the wall and being able to take the fucking heat.”
On the evening of his show in Norfolk, Ken is woken up from his nap on the bus only five minutes before he’s supposed to hit the stage. Groggy, he throws on a t-shirt as he’s escorted by his security and police officers to the venue less than a minute walk away. A kid in the distance spots him and innocently chants “Opium…Opium” in a tone that unintentionally sounds a little like “Warriors, come out to play.” Ken looks uneasy.
He’s through the doors and immediately he’s on the stage roaring the chorus of “Hardcore”—the crowd loses their minds like usual. As his set winds down, a bearded man in Chaos merch sprints across the stage headed right for Ken. Before he can get there, Dre hits him with a Goldberg spear. Swiftly, the police help escort Ken outside and as he storms back to the bus, a woman from behind suddenly, loudly yells “Ken!” On high alert, his security and friends spin around to face her. “What!” Ken shouts. She cowers a little and responds, “I just want a selfie for my daughter.” He lets his guard down and snaps a photo quickly.
The next morning Ken is in high spirits, rapping to himself the lyrics to “Delusional,” the first single off More Chaos. “Shawty say she want my semen, I’m all in her throat,” he sings, bobbing his head. Right after, White shows him a TikTok of a kid dressing up as him for Halloween; they even have the same multi-colored locs. “What the fuck, that’s crazy!” goes Ken, with a baffled smile on his face. “I try to do outrageous shit motherfuckers can’t copy and they still do.”
There was a moment, back in Richmond. It’s the early afternoon of another show day. Ken brings a PS5 out of his bedroom and drops it in the lap of a confused White for him to set up in the venue’s green room. There, Ken waits for the guys to figure out the cord situation, while still encased in his blanket. When it’s set up he gets into trash-talk-heavy clashes with JBans in FIFA and Madden, standing two feet from the TV like a kid playing their new game on Christmas. They bet and Ken rage-quits once or twice until he tires himself out, and goes to relax on the couch, where he gets a kick out of a few viral rap songs that he doesn’t fuck with. He’s in a great mood. We get to talking and unexpectedly he goes, “You know I was insecure in myself early.”
“About what?” I say, surprised he’s bringing that up himself.
Here it goes: After all of this, a moment of self-reflection from Ken Carson, one of the faces of Opium and all their baggage, who came of age in the glitzy and uncensored Atlanta rap scene and is on the way to being the soundtrack of young male rage.
He swings his hair away from his eyes, like he tends to do. Then: “What if my shows weren’t lit?”
If you or someone you know has been affected by domestic abuse, we encourage you to reach out:
The National Domestic Violence Hotline
https://thehotline.org
1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
