“Dismantled” is another standout, for the right and wrong reasons. Sonically, it’s a quintessential Ken Carson song: Its choppy blips of machinery are constantly in motion, grounded by a thick bassline that hums like a generator. He raps with the same conviction that dominated A Great Chaos, a presence that feels inconsistent on this album—extended verses on “K Hole” and “Evolution” show flashes but are too long-winded. (Not every song is “Me N My Kup.”) But “Dismantled” starts to get startling when you realize he’s putting a woman through brutal sex: “Rip this bitch apart/When I get to the hotel, she gettin’ dismantled,” he raps on the hook. It’s easy to shrug off Ken’s jarring one-liners when you can’t help but laugh at thembut this isn’t that. On “Root of All Evil,” he brags, “I go Chris Brown, wall to wall/She know how it get,” like that doesn’t read as a grim double entendre in 2025. Add in the fact that Ken and Opium’s own allegations of domestic abuse are public knowledge and these lyrics become nauseating. Even would-be romantic songs like “Kryptonite” talk about women like they’re concubines.
One of the strangest songs of the bunch, final track “Off the Meter,” features Destroy Lonely and Playboi Carti—after half a decade, Carti has finally consummated his role as label boss by acknowledging his signees on wax. What’s funny is how much it sounds like Carti found a random .wav file from 2022 and just threw a verse and some Swamp Izzo tags on it. It’s a fun track, but Ken and Lone sound damn near pre-pubescent compared to the muddier cadences they’ve honed since, while Carti taps into a level of dynamism that Ken barely touches across More Chaos. Listen to Ken nodding off at the end of his “Confetti” verse, or flatlining through most of “2000,” and then listen to Carti stretching his vocal cords like putty, inflecting with reckless abandon. Even after all this time, it’s still the teacher and the student.
All things considered, it’s comfort at the top that holds Ken Carson back. It’s why the back half of More Chaos drags; he’s going through familiar motions in hopes of making lightning strike twice. Just like A Great Chaos, More Chaos offsets its aggressive first half with bubblier textures and candied Auto-Tune on side two, but sometimes Ken sounds so bored when he’s not trying to jump out his body. “200 Kash” is delightfully sludgy, but the hollow, lust-driven relationships he croons about on “Down2Earth” and “Kryptonite” are tedious reminders of X, even if the beats are half-decent. By the time he claims that “Pat Bateman ain’t got nothing on me” on “Psycho,” I start to wonder if this is just the equivalent of clocking in for him.
If lyrical density is a concern, you’re missing the point of More Chaos, but Ken Carson’s emphasis on vibes and pointed aggression can only take him so far. A Great Chaos separated him from his peers, demonstrating how much ground he could take up outside of Playboi Carti’s shadow. A similar formula suffices here, thanks to a masterful crop of producers: Opium’s usual suspects (F1lthy, star boy, Outtatown), DRACO.FM standouts (skai, legion), and SoundCloud veterans like 16yrold. But as a whole, More Chaos is a lateral move, not a step up. It doesn’t help when you consider the chameleonic depth and firepower of last month’s MUSIC, an even longer saga of postmodern trap. Carti’s album left no room for his flow or cadence to get stale, shapeshifting in tight spaces like Orochimaru. Is it flawed? Definitely. But it thrives on the scathing unpredictability that More Chaos can’t quite pull off.
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