Opium artist, Ken Carson, excites his fans with his new album, A Great Chaos. The album got a Drake co-sign and sold about 49,000 copies in the first week.
The album was released on October 13, 2023, had 18 tracks, and was approximately 47 minutes long with features from Destroy Lonely and Lil Uzi Vert. It was a follow-up to previous album, X, as well as mixtape, Lost Files 4. The cover is a low-quality picture of Carson in front of a gray background.
Sophomore Tasimba Parirenyatwa notes, “I wish there was a Playboi Carti or BabyTron feature, but the features that were there were good.”
The last track on the album, “i need u”, was released on February 14, 2023, purposefully coinciding with Valentine’s Day. This single gained a lot of popularity quickly and started creating hype for the upcoming album.
On June 2, 2023, Carson officially shared the initial release date for the album of July 17, 2023. The album wouldn’t end up being released on that date because it wasn’t cleared for release yet. Carson then released a pre-save link on October 6, 2023, indicating the album was coming out on October 13, 2023. The full album was leaked through a Discord server three days later.
This leak, however, didn’t affect the official release’s popularity as it would outstream popular rapper Offset’s album, Set it Off, by almost 600,000 streams on initial release. Every song on the album reached at least 1,000,000 streams in just four days.
Carson hosted a launch party in Brooklyn on October 12, 2023 to celebrate the release. He performed songs “Singapore” and “Paranoid” from the album. He brought out guests, Destroy Lonely and Playboi Carti during the party. Parirenyatwa explains “The way that he promoted it made me excited to listen.”
This album comes before Opium’s Antagonist tour in 2024. This tour will feature artists like Carson, Playboi Carti, Destroy Lonely, and Homixide Gang. They will be touring in multiple different countries including Ireland and the U.S.
Most of the album is very similar, and there are varying opinions on this. Parirenyatwa states, “I enjoyed how the album was one aesthetic all the way through.”
On the contrary, Sophomore Sai Vedas Boypati shares, “It is the same type of music all the way through with different lyrics. Not a single song on the album was good.”
This album is similar to his other albums, Project X, X, and Xtended. All four albums have left impressions on fans. Parirenyatwa explains that his favorite album is Project X. He mentions, “The day I listened to the album my life changed”.
Whether you like rock music or trap music, A Great Chaos by Ken Carson had varying opinions and contained big name features.
