Album Review: xperiment by Ken Carson
Ken Carson stretches Opium rage-trap across 22 songs of drugs, jewelry, and grievance.
Rage was supposed to be a phase. Five years after Whole Lotta Red, the distorted synths and blown-out 808s have long since taken their bows, and the style has found its new center at Opium, the label where Playboi Carti hoards his disciples. Ken Carson has been the most consistent of them, if not the most devout, and More Chaos propelled him to No. 1 last spring by virtue of its weight. On xperiment, he keeps the same engine running at cruising speed, twenty-two songs of drugs, jewelry, women, and grievances delivered in an Auto-Tuned monotone that leaches his voice of its natural inflection.
Punchlines land in multiples, where a breakup dissolves into continental drift on “wheredoistart,” and he name-checks Thanos, BangBro, and John Cena’s villain turn in the span of one verse, “5.56s and .308s, this a drive-by,” juxtaposing the threat and the porn joke in the same flat register. He finds opportunities to assert his lyrical heft, too, if not his range: “Late night in the studio, I’m pourin’ my heart out in the booth,” he announces on “truth,” a song devoted to demanding honesty from everybody else while reserving his own.
Drugs outweigh women in Ken’s ledger, at least in this mixtape. Codeine is a daily medication and a personality trait, and on “the ritual” he shouts the Oxy chorus over the same 808 punch that carries the cautionary tale about selling drugs where he sleeps. He captures the dissociative thrill of being “off codeine, yeah, I’m pissed” on “outofmybody,” another song that wears its detachment as a badge of honor. This one’s hook, about raking money like leaves, is underpinned by a similarly dispassionate chant of “I’ve been fillin’ up my fuckin’ body with these drugs” on “possession.” On “amnesia,” he even gives his ex a compliment by diagnosing her with the condition: “I got amnesia, I forgot about all the times that I seen ya.”
Rage was supposed to be a phase. Five years into Whole Lotta Red, the blown-out 808s and distorted synths have since bowed, yielding their influence to the opium lounge of Carti’s disciples. And of them all, if not his most religious, Ken Carson is the most fervent, pushing his summer hit More Chaos to number one on the basis of sheer volume; it’s the same engine humming at cruise-control over xperiment, twenty-two tracks-worth of jewelry, drugs, women, and gripes, spoken in an Auto-Tuned deadpan that scrubs all the life out of his voice.
The punchlines come in multiples, a break-up becoming continent-spanning on “wheredoistart”; in “5.56s and .308s” he runs the whole gamut from Thanos to BangBro to John Cena’s villainous era to “this a drive-by”—the threat delivered at exactly the same tonal value as the pornography joke—all within the same line. He has space for boastful lyrical chops, if not breadth of expression: “Late night in the studio I’m pourin’ my heart out in the booth” is how he frames “truth,” a narrative devoted to soliciting earnestness out of everyone else while reserving his own for himself.
Women fall to the wayside when Ken’s tallying his daily vices here. Codeine isn’t just medicine; it’s part of his essence. On “the ritual” he holler a Oxy refrain against the very same 808 slam of the cautionary cautionary tale about selling drugs where he’s sleeping, and he translates that woozy effect into the dissociative glee of being “off codeine, yeah, I’m pissed” in the disassociation of “outofmybody,” which also serves as the place of a disassociated claim about “rakin’ money like leaves.” It’s a hook built over the same disconnected whisper of “I’ve been fillin’ up my fuckin’ body with these drugs,” a line found again on “possession.” His ex-partner can receive a compliment even, on “amnesia,” when she’s diagnosed with what her ex is supposedly enduring; “I got amnesia, I forgot about all the times that I seen ya.”
Young Thug stomps all over “drug kit,” all scratchy vocals and offers of Xanax, assuring a lady “you gon’ fall in love, and now she need a Xanax,” his cadence weaving over Ken’s clipped delivery. On “ghost,” he uses contrasts as a jump-off, bringing out the flow of Lil Uzi Vert who stretches the words out to fill space around Ken’s clipped boasts: “I just took your bitch, I don’t got a phone/I gotta write a love letter.” Carti makes two brief cameos, both slurred and smudged into the background—his growls just one more texture of Ken’s beat for “deaf note,” and this time around for “wedidit,” he’s mashing up canary diamonds with Men in Black workout gear over Ken’s repeated rhymes for the hook.
Ken slips in a festival tune with “edm”—festival synths on hip-hop drum breaks—“808s hittin’ just like EDM,” he declares, then drops, “I just want my mom to see me on TV,” “Bought my mom a house.” That last line is, perhaps, the better half of this love song directed to the family that matters. On his duet with 2hollis, “shadeson,” Ken turns out the most radiant song on the project, glossed over with electronic shimmer. The two sound like disparate siblings under the umbrella of cool, Ken’s shrouded in his chains and the sheen of it all, and 2hollis unvarnished, save the synths. When it comes time for “shopping”, though, the busiest production in the year so far between the high-end and mid-range ranges the track, treating commerce as the ultimate self-expression, culminating in the simplest and perhaps the best flex: “Now I get a discount ‘cause my name lit.”
Just to the 808 and Ken, though, it’s a bit sparse for ideas. “fw00” features mostly subweights and shouted non-sequiturs (Kurt Cobain and Smurf-blue Percocets thrown out within two measures). “amandabynes” repeats a similar punchline-dissing an ex-girl with, “She think she all that, Amanda Bynes”-using the celeb as shorthand rather than a meaningful symbol. The scene-setting for “wrist” lingers a bit long before getting to “Show me your wrist,” until one small burst of honesty bursts through the bravado: “It’s Ken Carson, R.I.P. To X.”
On his most consistently structured verse, “addiction” focuses on a girl diluting down her drug supplies (“She like Xans and coke, girl, tell me, where you get this addiction?”) with no awareness that she may have the bigger problem. He names down some price tags for Rolexes and Rick Owens clothes in the verse that follows while giving daps to producers and then comes down to the bare-bones truth, “I made so many M’s, my mom and sister straight, yeah, forever,” so much sincerity for his family in his best performance of the year, if that necessitates wanting even more, so be it.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “shadeson,” “edm,” “drug kit”