No one moment can be solely attributed to an artist’s rise, but I remember when it felt like everything suddenly fell into place for Ken Carson. Four summers ago, just a few weeks after his second album, X, came out, he turned a sidestage at Rolling Loud Miami into his little corner of the world. He galloped back and forth in his socks; he whipped his baby dreads and puffed his chest out; he rapped along to his songs for a few syllables at a time, leaving it to the crowd to fill in the gaps. But sometimes he’d just stop and stare blankly mid-song; his hoarse exclamations would soften into half-hearted groans. These rapid, abrupt shifts in energy made up the entire set, and it’s awkward to look back at now, yet I can’t remember a crowd I’ve been in that was as explosive. A year later, in 2023, he dropped one of the most exhilarating trap (or rage, or whatever the fuck) albums ever, and the rest is history.
But history keeps track of the blemishes, too. That same switch Ken Carson seems to flip on and off as he performs is doubly apparent on wax: xperiment, his recent, unadventurous follow-up to last year’s up-and-down More Chaos, sounds like it was recorded through uninterrupted stretches of that thousand-yard stare. Half-melodic breakup tracks (“wheredoistart”), lukewarm electrofodder (“wrist”), and collabs that simply exist off the strength of being collabs (“ghost” with Lil Uzi) take up the most space. His latest, cartunez, is a fun 13-track addendum to xperiment. It doesn’t abandon the formula that yielded those duds, but it injects some much-needed passion into the mix. Said formula has never really changed for Ken Carson: he finds sprightly electronics to build around, ensures the low end is fluid and violent, and uses his flows as a rhythmic buoy that can supplement—but hardly ever dictates—the direction of the music.
No score yet, be the first to add.
To say that Ken’s music is good because he’s a good rapper, or even a good performer, is like claiming burgers are great because of the bread. Like, yeah, you need the two buns, but man, you know what you’re really here for. The production and engineering is the meat and cheese, and on cartunez, there’s much more dynamism compared to its long-winded predecessor. I love the confetti cannon synths that turn “swag jack” into a demented carnival ride; the panicky trills and stuttering snares that makes “roxy reynolds” feel like New York drill from Saturn. The way lil88’s drum work on “9 bitches” could make a set of subwoofers twerk is damn near enough for me to tune out Ken’s dry Nine Vicious disses altogether.
Then again, engaging with Ken Carson’s voice as pure texture is what makes his best music so fun. He’s no longer inclined to perform real catharsis like he was on A Great Chaos, so on cartunez, you get the songs about money and clothes that hit, and the ones that don’t. You stick around for the rabid, gurgly vocal inflections (“Bread in, you can’t get a slice!”; “Damn, this hoe too bad/I’m coppin’ them diamonds, they put ’em on ice!”), and then duck for cover when bad punchlines start raining down (“I’m lookin’ for my powers/Sky High”). You can bust a move when the hooks circulate around a single word or phrase (I’m thinking of “scrape” and “50k”); shit, you might even laugh at a metaphor that actually works (“The stick got monkey nuts, I go bananas wit’ it.”) But the ceiling for songwriting is (still) as low as it gets for anything worth listening to.
