On Vanny Preem's CARNIBOYS, Post-Punk, Drill, And Doom Collide

Beneath the surface of the Triangle music scene, where underground rap and punk audiences bleed into one another, Raleigh’s Vanny Preem has emerged with a sound and aesthetic that captures the anxiety and volatile energy of 2026. On his latest release, CARNIBOYS, Preem delivers nine tracks with his Hard Knocks crew and other collaborators that feels like 30 miles of rough terrain at 80 miles per hour.

The album kicks off with “SKIMASK MICHAEL JACKSON,” a trap banger whose title encapsulates Preem’s aesthetic: pop-culture swagger pushed to the brink of madness. The beat carries hints of Cardo while Mizaiah and Preem trade airtight braggadocio bars. But the meat of Preem’s sound palette arrives with “DETROIT CARHARTT,” featuring Coberzz. Over breakneck post-punk, Preem and Coberzz build their world through a manic accumulation of proper nouns: Carhartt jackets, JDM cars, Mack and Warren (in East Detroit), ICE. The song moves like a late-night drive on Molly, illustrating how accustomed we’ve become to political violence, sexual bravado, and consumer imagery all occupying the same mental space.

The album stays in this lane with the N8NOFACE-sampling “MOSHCITY GIRLS” (which N8NOFACE reposted on his IG page), featuring STAR. Its sex-charged lyrics, layered synths, and driving rhythm are made for sweaty crowds at The Cave; you can almost smell the Pabst and weed smoke from here. “KNICKS IN 5 FREESTYLE” returns to barring out, as Preem—before growing up in near Raleigh, a native of Long Island—gloats about the home team’s success. “05 BATISTA” slows the tempo with one of the album’s best produced tracks—its cinematic synthwave beat channeling Com Truise as Preem croons through Auto-Tune.

“FRIENDS” puts you right back on that choppy road with another urgent post-punk rhythm built on a haunting guitar riff and Preem’s screamed ad-libs. The production is solid from SlimYungMan (aka Slim Scorsese), but this is where it shows that these guys are doing whatever they want, and getting away with it in their world. Then “BABY SAINT” returns right back into rap shit, with an off-kilter-flowed introduction–dropping into a beat that snaps everything into focus. The LOX sample brought joy to my NYC-raised heart.

“LUCY’S S14” slows things down as an Auto-Tuned R&B joint, with a verse from R9ueve spitting in Spanish. The vibey nature of the track is a natural transition into “RALEIGH NC, BROOKLYN, NORTH CAROLINA R&B BALLAD,” where Preem comes as close as he seems willing to get to a “regional record.” Je$ta shines with a smooth Southern flow, juxtaposing an album most defined by its jagged edges.

As a whole, CARNIBOYS is distinctly cinematic, particularly in its ominous chaos. The album recalls the 2006 film Children of Men, set in a hopeless dystopia where social order and institutions are collapsing around the protagonist, and every interaction carries the threat of violence. Preem’s carnival operates with similar emotional logic. Its lights, cars, masks, wrestling references, and flashes of bravado create spectacle, yet serve as artifacts of a culture decaying with its landscape, on a trip that not everyone will make it home from.

Most impressive is how well-produced and non-derivative the album feels. The beats are uniformly strong and composed for the world Preem is building in CARNIBOYS, rather than pulled from a folder of “type beats.” You can hear drill, post-punk, industrial music, cloud rap, and underground rage production, yet none overwhelms the album’s identity. CARNIBOYS absorbs its influences and turns them into something genuinely restless, local, and unmistakably its own.

Charles Morse is a Raleigh and NYC-based writer and DJ with a background in music journalism and radio. He writes about Hip-Hop culture, gaming, and regional music scenes. He can be reached at charlesmorsepr@gmail.com and @hazrdpay on Instagram.