Ken Carson and Playboi Carti Turn Static Into a Statement on “deaf note”

Buried inside a 22-track album rollout built on scavenger hunts and hidden USB drives, “deaf note” is where Carson and Carti’s chemistry hits hardest.

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• A Rollout Built Around a USB Drive
• Two Rage-Rap Voices, One Chaotic Track
• From Festival Stages to Streaming

“deaf note” arrives as part of xperiment, Ken Carson’s fifth studio album, released July 3, 2026, through Opium and Interscope Records. The 22-track project follows More Chaos, which gave the Atlanta rapper his first No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 in 2025, and it arrives with a promotional campaign nearly as elaborate as the record itself. Carson seeded physical USB drives in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York for fans to track down, each one unlocking early listens to unreleased material, while featured artists reposted teaser content across their own pages to confirm their involvement before the tracklist was made official. The rollout began even earlier than the drives, with Carson headlining Rolling Loud Orlando in May after YoungBoy Never Broke Again dropped off the bill just days before — a set that brought out Destroy Lonely, Playboi Carti, Young Thug, and Lil Tecca for a run of previews, including an unreleased 2hollis collaboration that closed the night. Complex reported that a follow-up mixtape, CARTUNEZ, is expected just a week after xperiment‘s release, framing the album less as a standalone drop and more as the opening chapter of a longer summer run. Details on that second project remain scarce, with no tracklist or cover art confirmed as of release day.

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Also known by the alternate title “cover my ears,” “deaf note” pairs Carson’s signature distorted, high-energy production with a guest verse from Playboi Carti, one of several marquee features on the album alongside Lil Uzi Vert, Young Thug, Destroy Lonely, and 2hollis. The track leans into the ad-lib-heavy, hypnotic style both artists have built their reputations on, trading dense flows over booming, atmospheric production that has become the signature sound of the Opium label roster. InMusic named it among the tracklist’s most anticipated cuts alongside “ghost,” Carson’s collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert, and closing track “wedidit,” which reunites Carson and Carti for a second time on the same record. The pairing isn’t new — Carti has shown up at Carson’s album listening events before, and the two have built a working relationship over several release cycles, with each artist’s catalog increasingly overlapping in production credits and guest spots. On xperiment, that chemistry gets a full spotlight rather than a brief cameo, with the track built specifically around the contrast between Carson’s more melodic, sung-rap delivery and Carti’s clipped, percussive ad-libs.

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The song had already made the rounds live before its official release. Carson and Carti performed it during a set at Summer Smash 2026 in June, and again at Rolling Loud, giving fans an early sense of how the track would land outside the studio. Live performances of unreleased material have become a hallmark of Carson’s rollout strategy generally — testing new songs in front of festival crowds before locking a final mix, and using crowd reaction as an informal barometer for which tracks deserve a spot on the final tracklist. Now streaming as part of xperiment‘s full 22-track release, “deaf note” is available on Spotify and via official audio on YouTube, giving the pre-release festival buzz a proper studio counterpart. With CARTUNEZ reportedly following just a week later, “deaf note” may end up functioning as an opening statement for a much longer stretch of new Carson material rather than a standalone highlight.