{"id":24285,"date":"2025-11-04T12:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T12:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/24285\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T12:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T12:54:07","slug":"review-playboi-carti-and-the-antagonist-tour-rock-pittsburgh-to-cap-off-halloweekend-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/24285\/","title":{"rendered":"Review | Playboi Carti and The Antagonist Tour rock Pittsburgh to cap off Halloweekend 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Vamp<\/a> has entered the building \u2014 and he brought some friends.<\/p>\n

Playboi Carti, one of the world\u2019s most popular trap artists<\/a>, is recognized for his dark and mysterious aesthetic, coupled with influence from the rage rap<\/a> scene. Since Carti\u2019s shift toward his now-characteristic sound with the release of \u201cWhole Lotta Red\u201d<\/a> in 2020, he\u2019s built himself his own Atlanta-made posse \u2014 the record collective Opium<\/a>, sometimes stylized as \u201c00pium.\u201d Often dubbed \u201cCarti\u2019s offspring,\u201d<\/a> the label notably features Ken Carson<\/a> and Destroy Lonely<\/a>, two of the recent up-and-comers in rage rap, as well as supporting acts Homixide Gang<\/a> and ASAP Nast<\/a>. Carti\u2019s entire Opium entourage was out in full force at PPG Paints Arena, roughly marking the midway point of Carti\u2019s Antagonist Tour.<\/p>\n

On Nov. 1, directly following Halloween, fans clad in black flocked downtown. Few wore actual costumes \u2014 Carti\u2019s aesthetic extended to his fans, wanting to emulate the emo superstar. The red accents of the black tour T-shirts disappeared amid a sea of black denim and leather. Anticipation built as fans filtered in, the stage sitting ominously above the pit, perched high atop two blacked-out semi trucks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, the chaos began. The lights dimmed, and the smoke machines began working overtime, making the air hazy through the strobing. Destroy Lonely<\/a> opened the concert, his platinum blonde and black braids distinctively swinging through the air as he jumped around. The short set gained more traction toward its end, as people continued to find their seats and \u201cLone\u201d<\/a> moved into his better-known songs. Fans raised their phone flashlights in the pitch-black arena, illuminating the crowd and rocking out to his biggest song, \u201cNOSTYLIST.\u201d<\/a> This was followed by a lengthy 30-40 minute break before Ken Carson<\/a> made a similar entrance to his song \u201cLord of Chaos\u201d<\/a>, exploding onto the stage in time with the pyrotechnics. Carson had a slightly longer set, saving his biggest hits like \u201css\u201d<\/a> and \u201cFighting My Demons\u201d<\/a> for the big finale. With eyes and ears still buzzing from the performances\u2019 special effects, the arena waited anxiously for Carti.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Carti started his set off with a bang, playing one of his more violent-sounding tracks, \u201cPOP OUT,\u201d<\/a> twice back to back. The majority of songs from the first half of the concert came from \u201cMUSIC,\u201d<\/a> Carti\u2019s newest album that he released in March. Tracks like \u201cOPM BABI,\u201d<\/a> \u201cCRANK\u201d <\/a>and \u201cCOCAINE NOSE\u201d<\/a> in sequence did not offer concert goers much time to breathe. However, Carti was looking out for his fans the entire time \u2014 stopping the concert multiple times between songs to allow people in the pit to breathe and gather themselves, as well as tossing out water bottles from the stage in between acts.<\/p>\n

While the majority of the setlist for the tour was from \u201cMUSIC,\u201d<\/a> Carti started \u201creaching into his bag\u201d about midway through his set. Out of all of his other albums, Carti played the most songs from \u201cWhole Lotta Red,\u201d starting out with hits like \u201cStop Breathing\u201d<\/a> and \u201cRockstar Made.\u201d<\/a> Right as we all thought that Carti was firmly going back to his older songs, he whipped out a euphoric remix of his song with the Weeknd<\/a>, \u201cTimeless.\u201d<\/a> Carti dove right back into the \u201cWhole Lotta Red\u201d<\/a> phase with a personal favorite, \u201cILoveUIHateU,\u201d<\/a> before shocking everybody in attendance. The next track, \u201cPlace,\u201d<\/a> not only made its concert debut for the tour, but Carti performed it for the first time in four years. Carti shouted out legendary producer and longtime collaborator Pi\u2019erre Bourne, who produced \u201cPlace,\u201d before the song \u2014 \u201cThis one for you, Pi\u2019erre!\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the insanity behind hearing \u201cPlace\u201d<\/a> live, Carti was able to keep the energy up. He rattled off three legendary tracks without interruption \u2014 \u201cShoota,\u201d<\/a> \u201cLocation<\/a>\u201d and \u201cLong Time (Intro)<\/a>\u201d \u2014 that flooded me with middle school nostalgia, reminding me of playing these songs on SoundCloud into my beaten, wired earbuds. \u201cLocation<\/a>\u201d was the only song he played from his first and self-titled album, while three songs from his sophomore album \u201cDie Lit<\/a>\u201d made the cut. This brief switch was a pleasant change of pace from the sensory overload of the first half. It also saw a significant increase in crowd involvement, as people finally heard the songs they\u2019ve been waiting for.<\/p>\n

The show ended in classic Carti fashion \u2014 pure chaos. The rap star and his entourage grappled down the stage with a rope ladder as the beloved snippet, \u201cMade It This Far<\/a>,\u201d began to fill the arena. People closest to the stage realized what was happening and began to push toward Carti, sparking a free-for-all as the rest of the floor blindly followed the mass of people. Carti moved parallel to the pit with heavy security before climbing atop the pickup truck that sat midstage. There, the Opium group basked in it all for a minute, letting the screams of adoration from their supporters mix with the fading snippet. At that moment, everyone in the arena shared the thought, mirroring the song\u2019s chorus \u2014 \u201cI can\u2019t believe we made it this far.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Vamp has entered the building \u2014 and he brought some friends. Playboi Carti, one of the world\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[7019,73,75,74,16091,16092],"class_list":["post-24285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-concert","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-playboi-carti","tag-rap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}