“That’s so Destroy Lonely, bro!”

Lone

Bobby Sandimanie III a.k.a Destroy Lonely a.k.a “Lone,” “The Darklord,” the “TopFloorBoss,” and the whole shebang, was destined to be a superstar from a young age. During his time growing up in Decatur, GA, his life revolved around music.

Lone’s father rapped. I know what you are thinking: “Anyone can call themselves a rapper and make music.” However, Lone’s dad wasn’t just your average Joe. In fact, I am 100% confident that you have heard his music before with the likes of his hit track “Move B*tch” with Ludacris.

That’s right - none other than i20 from Disturbing the Peace (DTP). Lone even called Luda his “Uncle Chris.”

Lone was always surrounded by music. In an interview with Voygela, he stated: “Honestly, I feel like I’ve been doing this all my life. I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t doing what I’m doing today.” Finding him outside the studio was as rare as the devil taking up figure skating.

At 14 years old, he started experimenting with music, creating tracks on his computer. However, at this point, he wasn’t taking it seriously.

After some time, Lone moved to the southside of Atlanta to live with his grandmother, who was one of his teachers. In middle school, he somehow persuaded her to allow him to stay home in sixth grade and continue his education online.

Despite him switching to being homeschooled, his hatred for class never left. He was always by himself and would tell his grandma that he felt “Lonely.”

When high school came along, Lone found himself back in class at a public school called Stockbridge. As time went on, he started discovering drugs. Eventually, he got into the habit of taking Xanax, which turned into a daily endeavor. In an interview, he exclaimed, “I’d come to school–7 o’clock in the morning–popping Xanax, geeked up.”

Fortunately, Lone came to the realization that he wanted better for himself. He knew if stayed on the same path, he’d Destroy himself.

One day, Lone randomly got his hands on a makeshift recording studio in one of his classrooms at school. He instantly fell in love. As days passed, he spent more and more time exploring his craft.

Before he knew it, he was skipping class to record. He made all of his first official songs at school with little recording equipment.

In due time, his teacher caught on and recognized how seriously Lone was taking the music. This led to Lone getting exclusive rights to the studio. He was able to essentially use it whenever he wanted to. This went on for a few months until Lone got tired of school.

He transferred schools once again as a last resort. However, then he began to get closer with two of his friends he met at his previous school named Texaco and Nezzus. He reconnected with Nezzus a year after switching schools when he came across him walking around Atlanta. By pure chance, Nezzus and his brother, Smoke, moved across the street from him.

This was the beginning of it all. Nezzus happened to have a studio, and Lone started to spend every day at his house. He got close with Smoke because they really f*cked with him, and, ever since then, it’s been completely up.

In Breativity’s interview with Nezzus, he said, “I was still on that southside sh*t. I wasn’t really locked in for real.” Lone told him that they had to get on the music grind. The duo dropped “NezzusDestroyed.” The rest was history.

Ken

Ken was from the Westside of Atlanta and later moved to the Southwest side, where he started rapping at 13 years old. As a kid, Ken had many diverse interests. He spent the majority of his time watching WWE, anime (specifically Monga shows), and cartoons like the Boondocks, Danganronpa, Death Note, and most importantly the X-Men comics.

Music was Ken’s sidekick growing up. He found pleasure in watching others enjoy music, which sparked Ken to pick up the Jew’s Harp and Harmonica.

Soulja Boy, Lil Wayne, and Future were his biggest influences as a kid. It’s safe to say these artists negatively impacted Ken when it came to school, given that he said he “slapped [his] teacher when I was ten” in an interview with Montreality.

In his teen years, Ken opened his first Twitter account under the handle “pimpcarson.” In 8th grade, Ken grew close to a girl who went to his middle school. Believe it or not, this girl happened to be friends with a producer named “Lil88.” With Ken and 88 sharing similar interests, the two connected immediately and became close friends.

Ken only ended up completing three of his required six months of military school. He said in an interview with Our Generation Music he was kicked out after he was “caught FaceTiming some b*tches.” The school had a strict no-phone policy.

Given that Ken was already so involved in the music scene, he knew he had something going for him. As time went on, Ken struggled in school, to the point where he dropped out and joined a military academy at 15. He decided to get his GED in the same year he was kicked out of military school.

In 2016, he got more involved in the social media scene, creating his first Instagram handle “boybarbiekencarson.” This was also around the time, however, when he started experimenting with drugs and partying.

Eventually, Ken learned that his middle-school friend, Lil88’s cousin, grew to be the not-so-well-known producer TM88. Just kidding. For those who are unaware, TM88 produced hits such as Uzi’s “XO tour Llif3,” “Codeine Crazy” by Future, Travis Scott’s “NightCrawler,” etc. etc. His discography goes on and on. Ken capitalized off of the opportunity.

The same day he found Lil88 was TM88’s cousin, he took a trip to TM88’s studio to showcase his music. He was impressed and introduced Ken to 808Mafia’s world-renowned cofounder, Southside. During studio sessions from here on out, Ken was regularly around artists like Travis Scott, Young Thug, and even Playboi Carti.

Carti was one of Ken’s favorite artists at this point. Carti started inviting Ken to open a few of his shows, only for Ken to almost get in a fight with someone in the crowd at a concert. Ken was kicked out of the venue.

Luckily, Ken was directly invited back from Carti and given a wristband.

Ken started releasing his first tracks, which are mostly lost due to Ken’s ex-girlfriend deleting his old SoundCloud account. Around the same time, on October 24, 2017, Ken performed at his first show, thanks to TM88.

Opium

In November of 2019, Playboi Carti announced the creation of his record label, Opium.

Only a few months prior, Lone released a track called “bane,” which started to gain traction. The track caught Carti’s attention. However, it wasn’t until the release of his “Oh Yeah” music video that Carti truly took notice. Four months later, Lone appeared in Carti’s certified platinum track, “Sky,” off Whole Lotta Red.

On January 31st, 2021, Destroy Lonely officially announced that he joined Opium. By the time Opium was announced, Ken had been friends with Carti for over a year. The two began a strong relationship, posting pictures together in a hotel together in February 2020, shortly after Ken officially signed to Opium.

Ken and Lone each adopted new approaches to social media. Rather than focusing on their personality and antics, the two concentrated on their brand image. Associating themselves with darker themes lends an air of authenticity to their music, infusing it with a raw and genuine resonance. In an interview with Complex, they trashed Pharell Williams’ hit “Happy.” How can anyone dislike that song?

In my opinion, their adaption to the dark and gloomy aesthetic has not only set them apart in the rap scene but has become so ironic that people reference it all over social media.

It’d be a cold day in hell if you hadn’t seen a comment like “Woah, that’s so Destroy Lonely of you, bro” when engaging with melancholic or dark content on TikTok or Instagram through their somber fashion-style and environment.

When the two went to purchase new jewelry at Ice Box, they brought up the simplicity of shopping for clothes. Their sole criteria are that they are 1. costly and 2. black.

Their stand out brands are Rick Owens, Givenchy, Marni, and once again, whatever’s black. If you are asking yourself: “Where can I find Destroy Lonely or Ken Carson?” Look no further. Stop by Dover Street Market in New York and there is practically a 100% chance that you will find them purchasing Maison Margiela kicks.

The term "X" (ecstasy) is prevalent in pretty much every one of their songs; they frequently shout terms such as "XXX," "X-Men," "X," etc. This association is also linked to the shadowy realms of teenage drug use.

If Looks Could Kill

Everything trickles down to Lone’s newest album release, If Looks Could Kill (ILCK). This is the first point when his newfound brand identity harmonized with his music.

Unfortunately, covering every single Lone project up to this point is beyond my pay grade. Nevertheless, up until this point, Lone and Ken had a high-energy and exuberant cadence on most tracks. Additionally, there was a significant change from the high-tempo style of the previous album, No Stylist.

ILCK introduces a slower pace, setting the tone for the entire album. What caught my attention was Lone’s heavy rock music influence. The rock theme is prevalent throughout the album and it is especially evident in the sampling of Halestorm's "Heathens” in the title track.

The slower songs on the album mirror the pacing of rock ballads. It’s interesting to witness Lone stand out by exploring a more gradual progression and incorporating more diverse sounds into his music.

At this point, Lone is everything he could’ve dreamt of as a kid - being a rockstar, raver, and model. There is a clear step up in production as far as sounds and beats. In addition, going back to the prominent themes, tracks like "how u feel?" and "fly sht" demonstrate introspection and emotional nuance, while "which one" reflects on love and loneliness.

The songs are far less diverse than his previous albums. However, if you like relaxing tracks with an ambient beat and an electric guitar melody, it’s an excellent album to chill out to.

I noticed only two issues with the album. First, on “came in wit,” there’s an annoying whistling noise– which could have perhaps been added intentionally. Secondly, not all of the tracks carried their weight in terms of the deep, introspective concept, which is hard to do on a 26-track project.

WHY DO KEN AND LONE HAVE SO MANY LEAKS?

There is no short answer to this question as there are many factors that contribute to music leaks. It’s tricky, however, I will do my best to explain.
Leaks have always been prevalent in the music industry. Especially during the popularization of peer-to-peer file-sharing sites such as Napster and Limewire, the sites were not only used for illegal music distribution/piracy but they were also used to share leaked tracks.

Though artists, producers, and engineers have intensified their efforts to safeguard their tracks, preventing leaks remains an almost unfeasible challenge.

Leakers often give artists ultimatums through music extortion where if artists don’t pay an asking price they will release their leaks to the public.

For example, in an interview with Apple Music, Trippie Redd mentioned “I was held for ransom. They wanted me to pay them $1,000,000 because they had all of my records and features.” The hackers forced Trippie to rush and release his album, Mansion Musik, back in January.

Leaks are an artist's worst nightmare. Don't believe me? Just talk to Young Nudy who had 172 unreleased tracks leaked last December. This is the equivalent of what could have been over ten albums.

Lone and Ken have experienced this phenomenon firsthand. The two combined have had hundreds of songs leaked, many of which are posted on Spotify. With modern security implementations such as two-factor authentication and password managing platforms (i.e., Google Authenticator, Duo Mobile, Microsoft Authenticator, etc.), how are tracks still leaking?

There are a couple of popular music leaking processes. The biggest method is known as “SIM-Swapping.”

SIM-Swapping

To Sim-Swap, hackers start by gathering as much personal information about their victims as possible. In today’s day in age, the procedure is fairly simple given that most information is now public due to social media. When out of luck, many hackers turn to the dark web to purchase information with crypto, anonymously.

This approach allows them to access information about an artist, producer, or engineer’s birthday or even info like their mother’s maiden name; both of which are typical security questions.

Moreover, if all else fails hackers will occasionally employ deceptive emergency disclosure requests (EDRs). An attacker might create a counterfeit EDR by posing as a genuine requester, like a law enforcement agent, or by applying fake “official” logos to the request to obtain information.

With SIM-Swapping, rather than using this information to try to get into an account via a physical application or platform, the hackers turn to their target's phone service provider. They then call the customer support hotline and claim to be you.

The weakest link is the customer service rep because they are underpaid and aren’t usually highly trained; they are an easy target. The customer service provider is often the lone hurdle standing in the way of an artist’s unreleased discography. The leakers will then claim that you damaged or lost your phone’s SIM card and need a new one.

If successful, the hacker is able to activate and mail themselves a new SIM card under your name and can access anything on your phone. Not only do they have access to all of the files on your phone, but they can also sign into any of your accounts that have two-factor authentication apps set up.

Two-factor authentication sends the login code to the phone with the SIM card that is now in the hacker's possession, and from this point on they are unstoppable.

Not only is this practice common in the music industry, but even last month one of Ethereum’s (a popular cryptocurrency and blockchain) Co-Founders Vitalik Buterin in a SIM-Swapping case. The hackers reportedly “stole over $691,000 from victims who clicked a malicious link posted to Buterin's account.”

Database Breaches

The second method hackers use to leak music is from database breaches. There have been numerous high-profile data leaks affecting millions of accounts.

Hacker groups generally sell files with thousands of usernames and passwords obtained from their cyberattacks on the dark web. If an artist, engineer, or producer has ever used the same email and password as an account that has been breached, the hacker can directly sign into an account.

Even if the leaker can’t find a password to an artist’s leaked email with no leaked passwords, they can use that email to find other emails that do have leaked passwords which can be used with that original leaked email to log in.

In fact, unbeknownst to anyone many of these login credentials are available publicly for anyone without accessing the dark web. Although music leakers don’t commonly use this method, many hackers use a website called “Nulled” where they buy “combos” of hundreds of thousands of account combinations in the hope of cracking into an account.

They then use applications designed to mass-log into desired platforms (ex: Netflix, Spotify, and even Minecraft are popular) all of the cracked accounts at once and will market the accounts at a premium.

Leakers also use the data breach method to get access to online shared files. A 17-year-old leaker told Vice, “You get into the email account, filter through emails that have attachments, and then you’ll find songs because they all send songs via email. That’s how I get most of the songs.”

Apart from leaking, if a producer or engineer knows a particular track will never be released, they will sell it themselves. Sometimes people from artist’s camps sell them off as well. Even Murda Beatz stated in an interview with No Jumper that has posted artists’ tracks on his SoundCloud and blogs with pick

Once a leaker is in possession of a song or project, how do they sell it? GroupBuys.

GroupBuys

GroupBuys are held through Discord and leakers post a song with a set price of at least a few thousand dollars and fans all chip in until the price is reached. Once they raise the money the leaker sends them the track.

The buyers feel the exclusivity since they are some of the select few granted access to the song. Eventually, a buyer will decide to sell the track themselves and the cycle repeats and the song keeps spreading.

In April 2021, reports stated that Juice WRLD fans had spent over $600,000 on Groupbuys for leaks. In fact, they’ve paid as much as $20,000 for one song. Juice WRLD has been a massive target for leakers to sell on GroupBuys over the past few years since fans are angry that Lil Bibby and Grade A haven’t been releasing consistently.

Leaks pose a large issue for many artists as the entire album rollout process takes even longer. Occasionally artists like Trippie will rush and release their projects immediately so they don’t miss out on streams. Alternatively, artists will scrap their albums and move on.

Oftentimes, leaks will go viral on social media and can potentially indicate to an artist that a track is promising. Take “Blueberry Faygo,” a track that helped kickstart Lil Mosey’s career. Mosey said in a since-deleted interview with Genius that he otherwise never would have dropped the song.

Ken And Lone Grails

Fans refer to their favorite tracks and leaks as “grails.”

Even in other genres, grails have turned into viral sensations such as “Part of Me” by Ke$ha and “Stronger” by Kelly Clarkson.

Leakers use platforms such as DistroKid to upload Ken and Lone’s grails onto platforms such as Spotify and SoundCloud under different names. There are dozens of examples. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regularly listen to Carti’s “Spaceship” which was listed under the name “particarti” on Spotify back a few years ago.

Leakers behind the Spotify accounts such as “Rick Owens,” “vjacob,” “lfys,” etc. marginally profit off of Lone and Ken tracks, and having the tracks taken down is fairly difficult. However, at the end of the day, it isn’t about the money, it’s about sharing good music.

I am convinced that those behind these accounts have largely contributed to Ken and Lone’s success. Popular leaks like “Free Young Thug” and “the city” have over 5 million plays on select accounts on Spotify, and it would be fair to infer that many of them became fans as a result of these tracks leaking.

All major record labels have legal teams in charge of taking down leaks from streaming platforms. Interscope takes down tracks fairly often, however, there are so many Ken and Lone leaks that it is tough to keep up.

The influx of cloud service platforms like DBREE and illegal music distribution website such as leaked.cx play a major role in the difficulty of tracking down songs.

I personally believe that Ken and Lone purposely keep some leaked tracks up on Spotify so fans can listen to them because the leaks are almost always taken down the day before the tracks are officially released.

However, as I’m writing this article there is a large possibility that these leaks won’t fly anymore as Ken’s entire new long-awaited album, A Great Chaos, was just leaked in its entirety four days before the official release date.

The ongoing dance between artists, devoted fans, and record labels in the wake of increasing leaks adds an unpredictable twist to the music distribution landscape.

My Recommendations:

Destroy Lonely, “hldmyhand.wav”

To this day, it is insane to me that “hldmyhand.wav” was never officially released on streaming platforms. Unfortunately, the song uses a sample from “Little Bit” by Lykke Li, so Lone couldn’t get it cleared. The first portion of the track gives me an indescribable sense of nostalgia. Lone’s flow is unmatched and the build-up with the mix is fantastic. The best way I can describe the beat drop is that it’s a storm of different sounds coming together to bless listeners' ears. It’s a beautiful song and similar to most Lone songs, I don’t listen to it for the lyrics. I grew up listening to Wayne and Kendrick but nowadays I’d rather sit back and groove.

Destroy Lonely, “safety (interlude)”

This is one of my favorite beats that I’ve heard Lone rap on. The track itself was produced by five separate producers who were each probably just taking turns laying down hi-hats. There’s a relatively high chance that it's just for placements, similar to most tracks with this many producers. “Safety” utilizes yet another sample. This time from Team Sleep’s “Blvd Nights.” This is my favorite track on ILCK. Lone is the realest and all he needs is himself. For example, he raps: “I'm standing in my yard, with a cup and a blunt / I'm standing in my yard and I ain't going for nothin' / If the world end, I'ma be the only ***** left.” This excerpt doesn’t need a dissection. It’s just so real.

Destroy Lonely & Ken Carson, “eXodus”

Produced by Ken’s childhood friend Lil88, I can confidently say that “eXodus” is my favorite Lone and Ken song, the true X-Men. Their energy comes together creating a masterpiece. The track is comparable to “From the D to the A” by Tee and Yachty. It’s a shame this song was never released. Throughout the song, they pass the mic back and forth creating a whole new type of happiness, vibe, and hype. The flow switches up throughout the song and it feels like I'm on my toes every time I listen to the track. There was an earlier “eXodus'' leak under the title “XXX” that was obviously unfinished which goes to show how songs can leak at different steps throughout the song creation process

Ken Carson, “Till I Die”

I highly recommend “Till I Die” if you are thinking about getting into Ken. The track is off of my favorite album, Project X. The beat is lively and it’s impossible to not be in a good mood listening to the song. The beat itself sounds like there are two different 808s, with a trickling-xylophone type effect. Ken shows his true goofy personality in some of the lines like “you bought her a bag / I bought her some chips” and “you bought her Chanel and I bought her some takis.” What’s crazy to me is that Ken doesn’t even listen to rap anymore. He predominantly listens to punk-rock groups such as Green Day, All American Rejects, and Blink-182 which is where I assume he gets all of this energy.

Ken Carson, “Teen Bean”

Before Ken took the $ out of his last name, this was the song I was bumping 24/7. “Teen Bean” is one of the catchiest songs I have ever heard. Once again, Ken is his pure self. No girl will change him or his beliefs. He mentions “I don’t move how you want me to move / I don’t do what you want me to do / I do what I want / I do what I please / I don’t do this for you b*tch I do it for me / What I do you wouldn’t do it for me.” The track was originally released as a throwaway for his project Lost Files 2 but his audience really messed with it so he fully released it on streaming platforms.

Written By Eli Grehn

Featured