Carnage The Executioner isn’t the same man he used to be. Since adopting a plant-based diet a few years ago, he’s undergone a total transformation, losing roughy 100 pounds. But more importantly, he’s changed how he looks at food.
On his most recent album Ravenous, the Minneapolis-based MC explores that once-abusive relationship with food and how he’s overcome his addiction. One of the 14 cuts, “Eat To Live,” just received the video treatment and finds Carnage abandoning his former meat-heavy diet — quite literally.
“I decided that I didn’t want to be overweight anymore,” Carnage tells HipHopDX. “I didn’t want to be 150 pounds overweight. So, I started thinking about my relationship with food and how it’s pretty much helped me stay bigger than I need to be.”
Carnage continues, “So, I decided to go vegan and then the concept of the record came around full circle, but it took two different meanings. You use ‘ravenous’ to describe two different things.
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“It’s like the hunger of somebody who’s going to work hard to achieve what it is they need to achieve and stake a claim. Then it’s fighting the hunger that makes you want to constantly consume everything you can get your hands on — from attention to food to women, whatever.”
As he explained, Ravenous is also Carnage reasserting himself as a force to reckon with and losing the weight now allows him to “be as hungry” as he possibly can.
“Everything is such a metaphor and they all play into each other,” he says. “Now I’m not over-consuming food, I’m over-consuming the road. I want to be on the road and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to be on the road. I’m trading eating everything I could get my hands on for a plane, every city I can possibly play, to get to get as many fans as I can.”
Like many others, Carnage was inspired by the 2017 documentary What The Health? Directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, the film reveals the secret to preventing and even reversing chronic diseases, while exploring why the nation’s leading health organizations don’t want people to know how to do it.
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“It started with me being willing to listen to what people were saying about changing my eating habits,” he says. “It then became talking to a bunch of friends of mine and realizing that people were going vegan and people were eating better. They were throwing out the idea that I should watch this movie What the Health? so I watched it and then I went cold turkey. I was like, ‘OK, that was enough.'”
Ultimately, that led to the concept for Ravenous. Released on May 13, the album also contains the previously released single “Not Just A Name.”
Check back with HipHopDX this week for a full Q&A with Carnage. During the conversation, he’ll talk about his close friendship with the late Eyedea, the art of storytelling, his insane live shows and, of course, Ravenous.
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Until then, watch the “Eat To Live” video above and cop the album here.
