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A Great Chaos
A Great Chaos is the third studio album by the American rapper Ken Carson, released on October 13, 2023, through Opium and Interscope Records. The album's production was handled by various producers, including F1lthy, Lil 88, Star Boy, Outtatown, and TM88, and features guest appearances from Destroy Lonely and Lil Uzi Vert. A rage album, A Great Chaos is characterized by its maximalist production with glitchy, digitized instrumentation, hedonistic attitude coupled with moments of vulnerability and angst, and horror references. The album's lead single, "I Need U", was released on February 14, 2023. A deluxe edition with seven bonus tracks was released on July 5, 2024; it was preceded by the single "Overseas", released on April 12.
A Great Chaos received critical acclaim, with praise for its appeal and production. Considered Carson's breakout album, it earned 48,000 album-equivalent units in its first week to debut at number 11 on the US Billboard 200, becoming Carson's first top 20 album, and performed well in Canada and Europe. The album was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in August 2025. Carson embarked on the Chaos Tour of Europe and the United States in support of the album from July to November 2024. As of April 2025, the album has earned 1.3 million album-equivalent units worldwide.
In July 2022, Ken Carson released his second studio album, X, through Opium and Interscope Records. While it was his first album to chart on the US Billboard 200 chart, it was not well received by critics. According to Lavender Alexandria of HotNewHipHop, Carson's style on X was compared unfavorably to Opium labelhead Playboi Carti and led to Carson being dismissed as a "Playboi Carti rip-off". Despite this, Carson said he was not influenced by the reception of X when making A Great Chaos, as he "[does not] make [his] music for critics".
The production of A Great Chaos was handled by more than a dozen producers, including F1lthy, Lil 88, Star Boy, Outtatown and TM88. Carson said he would go to the studio every night to record material, including when he was on tour, and try and work out an idea from beats his producers sent him beforehand. He considered potential crowd reactions when recording his songs. Lucian, one of the album's producers and a frequent collaborator, said that Carson would sometimes "instantly know what to do on [a beat]" and come out with a song in a single take. Examples of this occurring include "Hardcore", and "Overseas". The album was completed by August 2023.
[The title] literally just speaks for itself. It's a great chaos. It's a great work, but it sounds massive.
A Great Chaos is a rage album. According to David Crone of AllMusic, it sees Carson "[push] his signature sound even further with wilder flows and more forward-thinking beats". Characterized by its maximalist production, it features "digitized, crunchy instrumentation", and "excessively" loud mixing centered on Carson's vocals, whose delivery was described as "radically blunt" by Mano Sundaresan of Pitchfork. Matt Mitchell of Paste called Carson's delivery "ferocious and meticulous" and highlighted its influences from Young Thug and Carti. Abe Beame of GQ described its tracks as dense, layered "walls" and "squalls of sound featuring dueling pluggy arpeggios laid under droning liquid-metallic bass lines and soft, gorgeous Kraftwerk melodies". Zachary Horvath of HotNewHipHop highlighted "Fighting My Demons", "SS", and "Overseas" for their "glitchy, booming, and futuristic trap-like beats" and Carson's "slurred deliveries and blunt lyricism". Will Gedron of HipHopDX, Jeff Ihaza of Rolling Stone, and Sundaresan also highlighted the album's tighter pacing compared to Carson's previous works, particularly X. Opium labelmate and frequent collaborator Destroy Lonely appears with Carson on "Singapore", "Paranoid", and "Like This", with Lil Uzi Vert joining both artists on the latter track.
In a 2023 interview with Clash, Carson said that he aimed to express energy in relation to where his life was on A Great Chaos. Brandon Brown, a former Vice President of A&R at Interscope, told XXL in a 2024 interview that he felt Carson was "talking about different experiences, different phases of things he's experiencing now, from pre-signing to being signed and more famous". Hedonism is a pervading attitude throughout the album, though John Norris of VMan highlighted moments of vulnerability. Sundaresan said that Carson's lyrics sometimes fall into "Opium-core" angst. Yannik Gölz of laut.de highlighted the concept of "internet horror"—with references to creepypastas, nightcore and low-quality true crime uploads—as pervasive in the album's visuals, song titles and "timbres", which he felt provided context to its "muddy mixing" and "confrontational demeanor". Lucian recalled that horror films would often be played in the background during studio sessions to cultivate a mood. Gölz did not categorize the album as horrorcore despite its horror influences. Grant Rindener of XXL shared this sentiment regarding Carson's lyrics, though felt "[he] and Opium can be clearly traced to that lineage".
"Jennifer's Body" features "glitchy" production and Auto-Tuned vocals from Carson, atop a synth instrumental. The song drew inspiration from the cult horror film of the same name, with its "stuttered" intro being a homage to "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by the American punk rock band Green Day, one of Carson's influences and his favorite band. The song's hook displays Carson's mixed feelings towards loving, but not necessarily needing, women. On "Fighting My Demons", Carson asks "Where the fuck my blunt? Where the fuck my cup? Where the fuck my reef?", before the song breaks into "off-the-wall production" featuring 808 drums, "chiming" synths and organ-like bass. Carson moves from "straight-line raps and pagan chants" in the song's verses, "spewing out unhinged one-liners, sports references, and weirdly addictive noises", according to Eric Skelton of Complex. Norris described its lyrics as "confessional". Carson said that they were not just about himself, as "everybody's got their own demons. [...] And even if they don't call them 'demons', they're problems." Following a "haunting" instrumental break, he ends the song with a "cognizant yet repetitive" refrain that Yousef Srour of HipHopDX likened to the 2023 Travis Scott and Carti song "Fein". "Singapore" is an "icy duet" between Carson and Lonely that "evokes stripper parties", according to Norris. "Lose It" features heavily distorted 808s and was described by Jordan Darville of The Fader as "the sound of a panic attack", with Carson rapping "joylessly" about his drug use and the weapons he keeps for safety. "Hardcore", which Sundaresan compared to The Wizrd (2019) by Future, sees Carson repeating four words over changing sonic textures. "Me n My Kup" was influenced by Gucci Mane's "Shirt Off" and features tightly stacked synths. A writer for Slant Magazine wrote how the track is so "anarchic" that it sounds as if they're "about to come apart from the seams". On the overdriven "Florida trap" song "Succubus", Carson obsesses over an ex-partner atop a "blinding fog" of heavy bass.
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A Great Chaos
A Great Chaos is the third studio album by the American rapper Ken Carson, released on October 13, 2023, through Opium and Interscope Records. The album's production was handled by various producers, including F1lthy, Lil 88, Star Boy, Outtatown, and TM88, and features guest appearances from Destroy Lonely and Lil Uzi Vert. A rage album, A Great Chaos is characterized by its maximalist production with glitchy, digitized instrumentation, hedonistic attitude coupled with moments of vulnerability and angst, and horror references. The album's lead single, "I Need U", was released on February 14, 2023. A deluxe edition with seven bonus tracks was released on July 5, 2024; it was preceded by the single "Overseas", released on April 12.
A Great Chaos received critical acclaim, with praise for its appeal and production. Considered Carson's breakout album, it earned 48,000 album-equivalent units in its first week to debut at number 11 on the US Billboard 200, becoming Carson's first top 20 album, and performed well in Canada and Europe. The album was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in August 2025. Carson embarked on the Chaos Tour of Europe and the United States in support of the album from July to November 2024. As of April 2025, the album has earned 1.3 million album-equivalent units worldwide.
In July 2022, Ken Carson released his second studio album, X, through Opium and Interscope Records. While it was his first album to chart on the US Billboard 200 chart, it was not well received by critics. According to Lavender Alexandria of HotNewHipHop, Carson's style on X was compared unfavorably to Opium labelhead Playboi Carti and led to Carson being dismissed as a "Playboi Carti rip-off". Despite this, Carson said he was not influenced by the reception of X when making A Great Chaos, as he "[does not] make [his] music for critics".
The production of A Great Chaos was handled by more than a dozen producers, including F1lthy, Lil 88, Star Boy, Outtatown and TM88. Carson said he would go to the studio every night to record material, including when he was on tour, and try and work out an idea from beats his producers sent him beforehand. He considered potential crowd reactions when recording his songs. Lucian, one of the album's producers and a frequent collaborator, said that Carson would sometimes "instantly know what to do on [a beat]" and come out with a song in a single take. Examples of this occurring include "Hardcore", and "Overseas". The album was completed by August 2023.
[The title] literally just speaks for itself. It's a great chaos. It's a great work, but it sounds massive.
A Great Chaos is a rage album. According to David Crone of AllMusic, it sees Carson "[push] his signature sound even further with wilder flows and more forward-thinking beats". Characterized by its maximalist production, it features "digitized, crunchy instrumentation", and "excessively" loud mixing centered on Carson's vocals, whose delivery was described as "radically blunt" by Mano Sundaresan of Pitchfork. Matt Mitchell of Paste called Carson's delivery "ferocious and meticulous" and highlighted its influences from Young Thug and Carti. Abe Beame of GQ described its tracks as dense, layered "walls" and "squalls of sound featuring dueling pluggy arpeggios laid under droning liquid-metallic bass lines and soft, gorgeous Kraftwerk melodies". Zachary Horvath of HotNewHipHop highlighted "Fighting My Demons", "SS", and "Overseas" for their "glitchy, booming, and futuristic trap-like beats" and Carson's "slurred deliveries and blunt lyricism". Will Gedron of HipHopDX, Jeff Ihaza of Rolling Stone, and Sundaresan also highlighted the album's tighter pacing compared to Carson's previous works, particularly X. Opium labelmate and frequent collaborator Destroy Lonely appears with Carson on "Singapore", "Paranoid", and "Like This", with Lil Uzi Vert joining both artists on the latter track.
In a 2023 interview with Clash, Carson said that he aimed to express energy in relation to where his life was on A Great Chaos. Brandon Brown, a former Vice President of A&R at Interscope, told XXL in a 2024 interview that he felt Carson was "talking about different experiences, different phases of things he's experiencing now, from pre-signing to being signed and more famous". Hedonism is a pervading attitude throughout the album, though John Norris of VMan highlighted moments of vulnerability. Sundaresan said that Carson's lyrics sometimes fall into "Opium-core" angst. Yannik Gölz of laut.de highlighted the concept of "internet horror"—with references to creepypastas, nightcore and low-quality true crime uploads—as pervasive in the album's visuals, song titles and "timbres", which he felt provided context to its "muddy mixing" and "confrontational demeanor". Lucian recalled that horror films would often be played in the background during studio sessions to cultivate a mood. Gölz did not categorize the album as horrorcore despite its horror influences. Grant Rindener of XXL shared this sentiment regarding Carson's lyrics, though felt "[he] and Opium can be clearly traced to that lineage".
"Jennifer's Body" features "glitchy" production and Auto-Tuned vocals from Carson, atop a synth instrumental. The song drew inspiration from the cult horror film of the same name, with its "stuttered" intro being a homage to "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by the American punk rock band Green Day, one of Carson's influences and his favorite band. The song's hook displays Carson's mixed feelings towards loving, but not necessarily needing, women. On "Fighting My Demons", Carson asks "Where the fuck my blunt? Where the fuck my cup? Where the fuck my reef?", before the song breaks into "off-the-wall production" featuring 808 drums, "chiming" synths and organ-like bass. Carson moves from "straight-line raps and pagan chants" in the song's verses, "spewing out unhinged one-liners, sports references, and weirdly addictive noises", according to Eric Skelton of Complex. Norris described its lyrics as "confessional". Carson said that they were not just about himself, as "everybody's got their own demons. [...] And even if they don't call them 'demons', they're problems." Following a "haunting" instrumental break, he ends the song with a "cognizant yet repetitive" refrain that Yousef Srour of HipHopDX likened to the 2023 Travis Scott and Carti song "Fein". "Singapore" is an "icy duet" between Carson and Lonely that "evokes stripper parties", according to Norris. "Lose It" features heavily distorted 808s and was described by Jordan Darville of The Fader as "the sound of a panic attack", with Carson rapping "joylessly" about his drug use and the weapons he keeps for safety. "Hardcore", which Sundaresan compared to The Wizrd (2019) by Future, sees Carson repeating four words over changing sonic textures. "Me n My Kup" was influenced by Gucci Mane's "Shirt Off" and features tightly stacked synths. A writer for Slant Magazine wrote how the track is so "anarchic" that it sounds as if they're "about to come apart from the seams". On the overdriven "Florida trap" song "Succubus", Carson obsesses over an ex-partner atop a "blinding fog" of heavy bass.