Ken Carson - Project X (5th Anniversary)

Five years after its 2021 release, Ken Carson's Project X returns in an anniversary edition, revisiting the debut that helped define the distorted, high-voltage sound of rage rap.

Released on Opium, the label run by Playboi Carti, it followed a run of EPs and served as Carson's first full-length statement. Reviews were mixed on the songwriting at the time, but the album found a devoted audience fast among rage fans and helped establish him as one of the movement's leading voices.

Most of the production comes from Star Boy and Outtatown, whose blown-out synths and booming 808s give the record its hypnotic, overdriven glow. Rock N Roll and Run + Ran remain the fan favourites, the first a short burst of chaotic energy and the second stretching past four minutes as one of the album's longest moments. Hella and Till I Die keep the pace fierce, with Carson's clipped, melodic delivery riding the beats rather than fighting them.

At just over 27 minutes, it is short, loud and relentlessly focused, and the sound he sketched here is the one he would push to further extremes on later records. Listeners who found him through his more recent work will discover the template being drawn up here, and it still hits hard.