Rishit Nagula

One of Playboi Carti’s previous concerts where he left his fans wanting for more.

Recently, The Antagonist Tour was announced to start early fall of this year. The tour consists of the four artists: Ken Carson, Playboi Carti, Destroy Lonely and Homoxide Gang. These artists are seemingly a phenomenon within the young adult realm, whether it’s fashion, music, or trends. They practically dominate the influential base that is social media.

Playboi Carti, formerly known as Jordan Carter, is a rapper born in Georgia who blew up on SoundCloud around 2017 with his own mixtape, mainly with the song “Magnolia,” even hitting Billboard’s top 100 in that year. After he blew up, he continued to produce his music, preform in front of millions and even hit #1 with his album “Whole Lotta Red” in 2020, becoming his first album to hit number one. Right before this time, Carti started his own record label, Opium, to produce his own music. Other rappers, including the ones on tour, joined as well. The list includes Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely, who are generally in the same genre as Carti. Their genre is classified as multiple names: trap, experimental rap, and rage. Their music is loud, with consistent beats that they talk or rap over. 

Not only are these creators influential music artists, but they’re also big fashion influencers, specifically Carti who has made things like streetwear, designer brands, graphic clothing and baggier styles popular among stylish youth. Simply by observing kids today, it’s obvious who’s been influenced by these kinds of artists. Whether they listen to them or not, people are more affected by their environment than they know.

Student Janiya Stubbs, a Health Academy junior here at Seminole High School (SHS), is a big fan of Playboi Carti. Her personal opinion of him states: “I like how different he sounded from Drake. When I first listened to him back in like 2015, around when [Drake’s album Views] came out, he was all I was hearing.” Many teenagers also agree that he is a lot different from other artists. He has a louder tone, more hype music, and loud bass, something many teenagers do not usually hear on their daily basis when it comes to popular music. He was a groundbreaking sound, and he lifts people up with his creative and playful productions. Stubbs continues: “He makes me happy, and I think he affected the music industry in a way that brought more light to new artists, because he founded his own label.” Opium allows him to produce and create his own music without the restrictions of lyric producers, directors and their marketing team. He gets to choose how he looks, what music he produces with his own sound, and how his image is created both in person, and virtually.

Another student, Audrey Rando, a senior here at SHS, is a big fan of Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely. Giving her input of the artists, she states: “My interest peaks with the type of music that they make and their style.” She takes a lot of inspiration from their style and applies it to her own personal looks, wearing studded belts and shirts, designer bags, baggier pants and mainly dark colors. She also mentions: “They’ve affected the music industry heavily, and create a different type of music that I feel like others take inspiration from and create their own version of it.” She is one of many that have been positively influenced by the way they affect the world today. With the amount of people in this world, it is quite hard to be different from someone else when everyone has a similar idea of what they like to some extent. But with this upcoming surge of these kinds of trap artists, it is a new idea and new genre that most people have never seen nor experienced before. 

These rappers are a new influence in our day, and many people take inspiration from them. Even with this influence, they also allow many people to create their own ideas or base it off of their ideas and style. They allow people to express themselves, feel more confident in their own skin, and bring a new sound to the table, overall making our world more diverse and stylish than we have been in the past.