📍 Moody Center — Nov. 23, 2025
Written by Perrin Boyd
Playboi Carti’s Antagonist 2.0 Tour stopped at the Moody Center Sunday night and I witnessed easily one of the wildest, most chaotic shows this year. The place was sold out, packed to the rafters, I was shocked by the sea of bodies on the floor already swirling into mosh pits before anyone had even touched the stage. The energy was unreal. Fans were dressed in torn black denim, spiked accessories, puffer jackets despite the heat, face paint, ski masks, and enough chrome hearts to blind someone under the strobes. Opium culture is definitely alive and thriving. Their passion, their fashion, this shared sense of stylish abandon: it all fused into something that felt surreal to be apart of for a night. I didn’t just watch this show but I got consumed by it.
Before Carti even appeared, Destroy Lonely and Ken Carson kicked things off as the openers and almost instantly turned the building into a circus. Both of them command a cult-like following. I’m talking fans who know every lyric, every ad-lib, every micro-inflection. Destroy Lonely brought this ghostly, floating energy that made the crowd sway and surge like a tide, while Ken Carson cracked the room open with pure adrenaline. Their presence felt like a warning shot: if you weren’t ready for chaos, it was already too late. They primed the venue into a frenzy and proved why the Opium camp has a grip on a generation.
When Carti finally emerged, it felt less like an entrance and more like the start of a riot. The lighting was dystopian and harsh: red floods, white strobes blasting in rapid bursts, fog swallowing the stage until figures looked like silhouettes out of some apocalyptic opera. Two massive semi trucks stood side by side in the front and headlights beaming into the crowd while his crew ran around the elevated stage acting unhinged. It created a visual atmosphere that was equal parts theatrical, chaotic, and downright lawless. The sound also felt louder than any show I had been to at Moody Center.
Carti performed with the kind of eccentricity that has made him one of the most influential figures in modern hip-hop and a pioneer of the rage microgenre. He yelled, he screeched, he growled, he barked. All while draped in avant-garde, gender-bending fashion that made him look like a rockstar from another planet. He’s not a traditional rapper onstage; he’s more like a modern-day punk icon disguised as a rap anomaly, and the fans hung onto every sound that came out of his mouth.
His setlist was stacked and relentless, ripping through tracks like “ROCKSTAR MADE,” “R.I.P.,” “Timeless,” “FE!N,” “CARNIVAL,” “Stop Breathing,” and more. The crowd detonated for “Stop Breathing,” and “FE!N” nearly blew the roof off. “Timeless” had the entire floor vibrating, and “CARNIVAL” pushed the energy to an explosive peak. A special moment for me was hearing “Shoota” live, one of my all-time favorites with Lil Uzi. And fans were pleasantly surprised by the live debut of “SOUTH ATLANTA BABY”.
By the time he ended with “Made It This Far” (still unreleased), I was genuinely exhausted by the amount of chaos I just partook in and I fully understood exactly why his fanbase treats him like a prophet. I’ve been a fan of some of Carti’s tracks, but now I truly get the craze.