A whistle sliced through the buzzing crowd on the half-full ground floor of The Anthem, warning attendees to move before the individuals around them did.
Holes opened across the floor as people stretched their arms outward to form mosh pits, climbed onto their friends’ shoulders for chicken fights and cleared space for backflips.
Before any performer took the stage, Ken Carson’s audience had already started a show of its own, transforming the air into a humid stickiness that left freshly planned outfits clinging to skin.
That balance between chaos, care and self-expression followed multi-platinum, Billboard No. 1 recording artist Carson as he kicked off his xperimenting Tour stop in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 5 with DJ Moon, prettifun and xaviersobased. Celebrating “xperiment,” his second consecutive Billboard Top 10 album, the show brought together fans who slammed into one another before reaching down to pick each other back up. Black attendees viewed the event as a space to embrace alternative sounds and styles without separating them from their identity.
Featuring collaborations with Playboi Carti, Young Thug, Destroy Lonely, 2hollis and Lil Uzi Vert, “xperiment” received nearly 16 million global streams on its first day, marking the sixth-biggest opening-day debut for a rap album this year.
As attendees made it through security and bag check, some ran toward the floor with their friends, jumping together and hyping themselves up for the performances. Girls in knee-high Converse and mini leather shorts stood alongside attendees wearing white tank tops, studded belts and all-black outfits. Others came dressed as burgers and characters from “SpongeBob SquarePants,” bringing the online references surrounding Carson and his fans into the physical crowd.
Staff members stood along the perimeter as smoke filled the venue and attendees tossed water between the stands. At the concessions, paper cups of water lined the counters as a precaution for the humid, sticky air beginning to form.
“Our staff, especially ushers and security, are highly trained for events like this,” said Maddie Ogletree, a member of the communications team for I.M.P. Concerts. “It’s not so much a matter of preparing. It’s the fact that everybody is already so prepared.”
Although this was Ogletree’s first time hearing of Carson, she watched the audience build as she worked the event.
“I find that a lot of people at this venue generally are just really excited to be here, but this crowd is, like, really excited,” Ogletree said. “It seems like it’s mostly a younger crowd, so it makes sense everybody’s energy is super intense. But not bad at all. Everybody’s been super nice.”
Erin Davis entered that crowd dressed in a black leather skirt, with jet-black curls streaked by platinum highlights. She accompanied her friend after previously attending Carson’s The Lord Chaos tour last year, but the setting had changed since she last saw him.
“It’s very different. I think this venue is kind of tiny,” Davis said. “I think Ken’s got way more popular. He’s kind of mainstream now, so it’s way more packed than previously.”
Davis and her friend initially stood near the front before she had to be pulled out of the crowd because of the nature of the pit.
“They really don’t have pit etiquette,” Davis said. “He actually took my head and pushed it into the gate to get down, and someone stole my lip gloss.”
Even after leaving the front, Davis did not allow the experience to completely define how she viewed the people surrounding her. Having returned for another Carson show, she still found value in the crowd beyond the moment that pushed her out of it.
“I love how they’re so expressive, and they kind of bend the norms,” Davis said.
As the performers intensified the crowd, moshing became a form of transportation. Attendees could enter a pit on one side of the floor and find themselves pushed to another, sometimes emerging with a better view.
Omar Tulloch attended with Kennedy Bundy from Woodbridge, Virginia, and found his entry into Carson’s music through the genres colliding within it.
“I like his crossover between rock and rap. That’s what really just brought me in,” Tulloch said.
As rock and rap met within the music, Tulloch considered how Carson and Playboi Carti have expanded what Black listeners feel free to explore.
“I think he pioneered it along with Carti, and definitely allowed Black people to be open to other types of music,” Tulloch said.
The faces surrounding Tulloch and Bundy gave them something they could not fully grasp from seeing Carson’s fan base online.
“In person it is a lot better, so it was crazy just seeing Black people coming to enjoy his music,” Tulloch said.
Bundy found warmth amid the crowd’s movement and the all-black outfits surrounding her.
“Seeing Black people gathering together just to come support another Black artist is always heartwarming,” Bundy said. “Even if it’s Ken Carson.”
For Spencr Madden, a virtual fashion major at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, seeing that gathering held personal weight. She has felt pressure to prove that she belongs in alternative spaces as a Black person, but inside concerts like Carson’s, that pressure no longer controls how she presents herself.
“Being Black coming to concerts like this, even if it’s not underground rap concerts, I always feel like I can just be whoever I want,” Madden said. “I don’t have to prove nothing to anybody.”
That confidence also shaped Madden’s response to people who question what alternative music means for Black listeners.
“A lot of people believe listening to his music when you’re Black, it makes you whitewashed, but it doesn’t,” Madden said. “I’m glad that Ken Carson has a lot of Black fans that understand that it’s okay to be who you are and embrace your Blackness.”
By the end of the concert, the crowd carried the physical evidence of the night. Shirts that had entered crisp were drenched in sweat and gathered around attendees’ necks, exposing their moistened backs. Outfits clung to skin, and although exhaustion became visible, each new song reignited the crowd’s fire.
Rapha Pierre, a 23-year-old artist known as Rapha909, emerged drenched in sweat. His Thrasher shirt, which he paired with camouflage cargo pants and tan Uggs, was gathered around his neck, revealing play, pause and rewind symbols tattooed across his chest.
Pierre has listened to Carson since he was in high school in 2020. Six years later, he found himself caught in the same energy that first connected him to the artist.
“Everybody’s music nowadays, it’s so easy to bring your spirit down to other music, but I just feel like Ken just be making loud, distraction-style music for me,” Pierre said.
Looking back at the sweat-soaked room, Pierre’s description moved beyond the physical contact that shaped the pit.
“It’s one really big community. Everyone’s open to everything and just hoping to have a good time,” Pierre said. “Even though sometimes it may be hit or miss sonically, Ken and his peers are trying to push this new sound, and they aren’t afraid to step out of the box.”
The same openness Pierre recognized in the music shaped how he approached his own place within alternative culture.
“The whole point of being in an alternative space is to be yourself,” Pierre said. “If you are worried about some pressure…then you might be going into it with the wrong mindset.”
Copy edited by Jori Johnson