A couple weeks ago in Brooklyn, I got a reality check. From the balcony, I watched Atlanta’s Che storm the stage, flashing devil horns and demanding mosh pits. “Open that shit up!” he barked, again and again. But somewhere between the snarls and bass drops, it hit me—he wasn’t really rapping anymore. The chaos had become choreographed, the destruction staged. The crowd wasn’t reacting to the music; they were performing for him. Sure, that’s the point of rage rap—collective catharsis through noise and adrenaline—but I couldn’t shake the thought: When is my generation going to stop biting Carti?
If anyone can push rage forward, it’s OsamaSon. The South Carolina rapper has already inspired his own wave of imitators. But engaging with the scene still means orbiting around whichever version of Playboi Carti everyone’s copying this month—Osama included. The formula’s starting to feel exhausted. Rage rap rarely leaves room for mystery; its influences hang low like fruit picked too often—Rolling Loud clips, Opium aesthetics, Hot Topic fits. That’s why Jump Out, Osama’s January release, felt refreshing. His melodies came with a bratty sing-song twang, his delivery warped into a robotic sneer, his beats pulsed with grime and nervous tension. It hinted at evolution.
His new album, psykotic, sits at a crossroads. Osama neither abandons Carti’s orbit nor escapes it entirely. Instead, he builds comfort into chaos. “Whats Happening” is one of his hardest tracks yet, a jagged rush of synths recalling Osama Season’s 8-bit frenzy. The hook—“I take my shirt off and all the hoes stop breathin’”—lands with swagger, but its echo of Whole Lotta Red makes it hard to fully buy in. I want to forget that lineage just long enough to enjoy it unburdened.
I first heard psykotic on CD, after the label refused to send streams to avoid leaks. Through a flimsy Walkman and cheap earbuds, the distortion sounded apocalyptic. Producer Warren Hunter’s intro collapses into clipping noise and 808 bursts so intense I thought the device broke. He returns on “FMJ” and “Get away,” his beats bludgeoning and claustrophobic. It’s all thrilling—if a bit familiar. Rage’s sonic signatures are so well established now that even excellence risks predictability.
Still, there are moments where Osama breaks free. On “yea i kno,” producers Rok and Gyro sculpt something luminous and synthetic—a glimpse of utopia amid the static. Vocally, Osama stays the showman. His voice, always on the edge of collapse, warps through pitch shifts and guttural croaks, turning basic street boasts into performance art. When he slows down, something real seeps through. “In It” and “Get away” reveal a strange tenderness, Osama sounding heartbroken and human: “Sometimes I feel like you didn’t wanna walk for it / Didn’t wanna crawl for it / I put in my all for it.” The sentiment lands because it feels unfiltered, maybe even accidental.
And yet, psykotic keeps looping back on itself. Its best run—from “In It” to “Whats Happening”—feels delirious and alive, the kind of high where fear and euphoria blur. But by the time Che shows up on “FMJ,” barking through Auto-Tune like he just rediscovered “JumpOutTheHouse,” the déjà vu sets in again. For a split second, he drops the act—his voice dips into a raw, guttural murmur—and it’s electric. Then it’s gone. The kids have the power to rewrite the formula; they just keep recycling it instead.
Young Thug once tried to outdo Lil Wayne by announcing Tha Carter VI before Wayne could release V. That kind of audacity—the urge to kill your idols—is what made him great. OsamaSon and his peers have that same spark buried somewhere under all the distortion. Someone just needs to remind them to turn the volume down long enough to find it.
About the Author
