“You wanna see my first show?” rapper Ken Carson asked from the back seat of a smoke-filled Cadillac Escalade. After receiving confirmation that this would be of interest, he flashed a diamond grill-laden grin filled with childlike joy and scrolled to the saved video on one of his social accounts. What appeared on the phone screen was a younger Carson, with shorter bleached-white locks, performing an early banger from within the crowd at a small venue (69-cap, but 150 showed). He packed it out off the strength of early hype and leaned, with freeing elation, into the embrace of his comrades in rage. “It's lit, right?” he proclaimed. “It's never not been lit, so I would fear for my life if it wasn't.”

He’s built a meteoric rise off performing with crowds of people who are equally hyped by the energy of his frenzy-filled music, rather than to them in the more traditional sense. If the crowd went away, it would be radically different. While some may critique Carson’s performances as unconventional, in reality, they are vibrantly youthful communal experiences between performer and audience that rely on a shared agreement to ascend. It’s a modern invention spurred by artists like Lil Uzi Vert and Carson’s mentor Playboi Carti. A performance style incited by the power of contemporary technology and sound systems, the modern music industry’s obsession with hype and a post-pandemic desire to have an emphatic release in unison.