Denzel Curry - 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX [2020]

Welcome to one of my many Write-Ups, where I dive into a contextual history of a project from an artist, while also breaking down the different parts worth mentioning. Come over to my Write-Ups page for a list of all of the work I’ve done so far.

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“Blood In. Blood Out.”

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When Trap music really took off in the early 2010’s, clearly Atlanta was the city behind the massive movement. It wasn’t something that had to be dug up and shown to people like Memphis rap was; it has been building slowly in profile for a long time, going back to the original trappers like T.I. and Jeezy, and peaking with artists like Migos and Future. But, behind the scenes, Soundcloud was unleashing a parallel beast, driven not by the smooth and urban sounds of Atlanta, but rather by the harsh, distorted and bassy sounds of South Florida. By the middle of the decade, the most forward-thinking trap music was coming out of places like Dade and Broward counties, and unknown places like Miami and Carol City were becoming the newest hot-beds of incredible talent. SpaceGhostPurpp, while being at the forefront of this movement in the early 2010’s, was undone by problems with both his mental state and his prolific release strategies, and his various beefs, starting with A$AP Mob and eventually growing to include almost all of his original run of collaborators of the Raider Klan, led to him being largely left behind to time. People had ideas of who amongst the wreckage of the Raider Klan would go on to be the “hardest motherfucker”: Yung Simmie and Xavier Wulf were two of the clear frontrunners, and both (well, mostly Xavier) have gone on to make their own impacts in the industry. But a third member would go on to make an even bigger statement, one arguably bigger than all of Raider Klan and SpaceGhostPurpp, and, amazingly, he would do it without forgetting any of his roots.

13 was a precursor of sorts to 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX, with similar levels of distorted chaos at the heart of the EP

Denzel Curry, the 24 year old (soon to be 25, happy early birthday to my guy) Carol City native, was someone who has a special part to play in the story of the Raider Klan. Handpicked by SpaceGhostPurpp himself after hearing Zel’s 2011 mixtape King Remembered Underground Tape 1991-1995, he grew to be the secondary face of the Raider Klan, and was known for his rock-solid consistency on the microphone and his youthful aggressive energy. Once the group fell apart, while his potential was obviously huge, it was through circumstance entirely out of his control that led to a massive amount of popularity in a very short amount of time. His song Ultimate off of his 32 Zel mixtape, became an inexplicable hit through the video sharing service Vine, an suddenly a whole generation of young people were hip to this man who brought aggression not unlike the punk and metal bands they had listened to before. He used this momentum, the bonds he forged in his post-RK career, and his amazing team of producers to craft his first major mainstream release in 2016’s Imperial, which presented Denzel as an utterly cutthroat emcee with an unstoppable flow, but with a mix of both ultraviolent and reflective bars, and also a capacity to embrace the sounds of more typical hard trap. Despite being a huge boost to his career, it was playing safe in regards to Denzel’s potential, and from here his career would only get more varied and more substantial. He took two years off between major projects, releasing his 13 EP in 2017 to curb his fans hunger; incredibly raw, brutal, and distorted instrumentals was his first nod to where South Florida was going as a sound, and instead of being left behind he was determined to be at the front of the wave. It was 2018’s TA13OO, his triple-disc journey through the psyche of a young, flawed, famous, but hard-as-nails individual, that cemented his artistry. He demonstrated that he was far from a one-trick-pony, and that there was a side of him that could sustain reflection for the majority of a project. But, as Denzel said himself, he’ll never make another TA13OO, with the album being born of a depressive and lonely part of his life, and he got back to the fun in his next album ZUU, which was a thorough exploration of the possibilities of combining the sounds of older Miami (Trick Daddy, Poison Klan) with newer Miami (Lil Pump, Ronny J). Denzel is entering a more positive part of his life, with experimentation being his M.O. going forward; just the other day he released a collaborative album with Kenny Beats which was, of all things, a demented boom-bap record. But just before UNLOCKED came out, Denzel released something that was so effortless, so oozing with talent, that I’m not even sure Curry himself realizes how potent of a product he just put out. Keeping with the naming scheme of TA13OO, 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX is a 12 minute, 8 track compilation of freestyles and collaborations that never placed on a project, released exclusively on YouTube as one continuous mix of songs. For something that is presented as a package of B-sides, it feels wrong that the project be left to wallow outside of streaming services or any sort of push for what I consider to be Denzel Curry’s best project to date.

SpaceGhostPurrp’s Mysterious Phonk put that Memphis sound back into peoples minds, with raw and low-fi fidelity mixing with horrorcore lyrics drawing heavily from early Three Six Mafia

The biggest thing about this 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX from a vocal production perspective is the layers and layers of distortion that is applies to everything here. There are several tracks like XX – CHARLIE SHEEN – XX (each track is stylized XX - ‘TRACK-NAME’ - XX, so I’ll just be referring to them as ‘Track-Name’ from here on out) where Zel’s voice is so buried in the mix it can be difficult to decipher what he’s actually saying, especially whenever he starts getting into that lightning-quick flow. Besides the obvious downgrade with being streamed on YouTube, this is a highly stylized choice calling back to the earliest and haziest days of SpaceGhostPurrp’s production, something that Denzel is aware of and uses to make his voice so villainous and disgusting that it makes his character on Imperial and 13 seem like children. Charlie Sheen and Gogeta sees his aggression and low-fi-ness ratcheted up to 10, but Evil Twin takes it up to 11, with the deep, guttural barks going well beyond normal hardcore hip-hop, and entering into the realm of metal (or more specifically to hip-hop, trap metal). No Pen No Pad is more of a showcase of an amazingly catchy hook than anything else, with the “no pen no pad, move around the city like a nomad” rolling off the tongue, and paired with a short an explosive verse it is one of the most put-together songs on the record (albeit one of the shortest). Welcome to the Future takes it back to Imperial’s fast trap flows, with a dexterous and machine-gun delivery bandying off quick triplets in line with old-school artists like DJ Paul and Juicy J. But the sung hook on here is capable, unsurprising given that Denzel spent time on TA13OO building up his capacity for melody. He continues these melodies on False Gods Freestyle and Pxsh6xd Shxt, but while Welcome to the Future has soft-spoken singing, these two would probably be more comfortable being considered melodic yelling, because while there is a soft tone to these two tracks, the energy is still here, and the subject matter is still metaphysical and raunchy. Denzel across 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX has leaned full-tilt into his newer brand of punchline rapping, which comes from his decision on his last album ZUU to freestyle everything that he does. While it is impressive as hell that everything on this project came off-top, it definitely leads to some weird ass lines. “Life is a bitch that I fuck: bestiality”? “Gotta be on point like a gnome hat”? Some may consider this to be bad, it’s just funny and entertaining to me, and gives Denzel as a human more to love about him.

Speaking of Three Six Mafia, this album right here, Mystic Styles, is basically the blueprint for Memphis rap (and SGP’s style), released all the way back in ‘95. Truly ahead of their time on this one.

Alright, so let’s get the only negative about this album out of the way: the length, both the entire length of the project and the song lengths. It’s criminally short, with no track on here going above 2 minutes, and the entire mix being shorter than Kendrick’s Sing About Me I’m Dying Of Thirst. However, being so short makes the next aspect of the record seem all the more impressive: the record flows together absolutely flawlessly, with the transition between tracks being truly seamless on the first and second halves. Going from the Intro, with its insane buried sample and rough slap of the drums, to Charlie Sheen is a neck-breaking exercise, almost like a drop in EDM where the instrumental builds and crescendos with the first second of Charlie Sheen. From that point, shit sounds like you’re being waterboarded with distortion, with the ungodly sub-bass provided by Finatik N Zac rattling your speakers at such a subterranean level it’s begging you to crank your system up to maximum, like a trap version of what SpaceGhostPurrp perfected a decade ago. But as quickly as it’s here it moves on, with Evil Twin assaulting you with some of the hardest bass notes I’ve ever heard (it makes a lot of sense Powers Pleasant is responsible for this madness); it clears up the mix slightly making things a little more intelligible, being more in line with instrumentals you would find on City Morgue releases with the clean trap hi-hats. Maintaining that brisk BPM from the past two tracks, the Marcelo produced Welcome To The Future brings in that Cloud Rap vibe with it’s heavenly chimes and synths with a softer touch, still framed within network of hi-hats and hard-hitting sub. This three song stretch almost feels like one song that morphs into three distinct parts, but it does have a clean break at the end transitioning into False God Freestyle, which serves as a middle point, broken from the two halves of the project. It’s also distinct in that it’s not a brand new instrumental like the rest if the record, being a slightly different SpaceGhostPurpp beat from his Purpped and Chopped mixtape, almost a decade old at this point. It’s clearer, but it still contains the digital-hellscape feel to it that made the original instrumental so interesting, being a direct link to the earliest days of Cloud Rap. Pxsh6xd Shxt is the most Cloud inspired instrumental here, with an unknown producer utilizing these synthetic reed-flute loops and rolling skittery percussion sounding like something A$AP Rocky would have rapped over on LIVE. LOVE. A$AP. The transition into No Pen No Pad literally sounds like the same take, with Denzel asking for the beat to change so he can spit some more; it’s also relatively low-key in comparison to the first run of tracks, with a well-structured and clean trap beat (still layered with haze that permeates the whole record); it’s probably the least interesting here, but it puts the spotlight on Denzel’s killer hook so I’m not upset. The transition into the last track, Gogeta, is an amazing flash of aggression before the project ends, wasting absolutely no time hitting you over the head with these alien synths and gut-busting bass. Finatik N Zac are on this one again, and the little details they put into this beat make it a truly epic moment instrumentally; the ever-present hi-hats, the cool stuttering effect in the drums, and, I cannot emphasize this enough, that sub is monstrous, especially leading the track out.

Xavier Wulf is a Memphis emcee through and through, from his bars to his flow. Hell, he even kind of looks like DJ Paul and Lord Infamous.

Despite the project only being 12 minutes, there are a total of four featured artists, and every one of them has a claim to the “best feature” title through their sheer aggression and chemistry with Denzel. We’ll start with Xavier Wulf, because while all features are amazing, Xavier’s is probably the most important appearance here; this is the first track Zel and Wulf have been on since 2012, before the Raider Klvn officially disbanded. The two even had a little bit of a beef going on between them for the longest time, mostly residual anger over the Klvn, but Wulf showing up on Welcome To The Future shows that Denzel is truly willing to let bygones be bygones and focus on the *music* these two can make together. Xavier has always pulled from the Three Six playbook, being like Crunchy Black and Lord Infamous rolled into one person, and that’s the exact attitude he brings to his appearance here. Ak the Savior, one half of the New York Beat-Coast duo The Underachievers, blows it out of the water on the final track, Gogeta, which is an affirmation of sorts of the deep influence anime and pop culture (like Dragon Ball Z) has had on both Denzel and UA. His flow is insane on here, and some of his lyrics are hilarious with how hard they are: “come with the force that a Jedi never seen” and “she suckin my Dragon Balls until I’m zeeeee’d, yuh” have yet to not get me hype, and his razor sharp delivery is tailor made for these kind of detailed trap beats. But if you’re talking beats that fit the feature, then Zillakami on Evil Twin is a match made in HELL, with the wood-chipper quality of his voice being matched by the disgustingly evil sub-bass. There’s more of a collaborative nature to this track, with Zillakami and Denzel trading bars on the hook, and the general vibe of the track showing how close the two are as musicians and friends. The crown has got to go to one man however, and that would be Ghostmane, who comes through with the most demented, entertaining, varied, and cold-blooded verse on the project. I love how the babbling insanity he starts his verse off with goes into this melodramatic emo rap yelling, before finishing off with these devilish croaks in the style of some schizoid black metal vocalist. Having someone like Ghostmane collab with Denzel Curry is something people have been asking about for a long time, and hopefully this opens the door to other link-ups from that scene like BONES & $UICIDEBOY$.

13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX is one of those projects entirely born out of a prolifically creative mind,  a spur of the moment release of such concentrated quality that many artists full length solo records could learn a thing or two about the necessity of imbuing heart into your projects. Denzel reaches back into the earliest parts of history, drawing upon the influences from his earliest collaborators, demonstrating that his creative energy has no limits, and that any bridge that seem to have been burned in his past has to potential to be rebuilt. SGP might be a lost cause for other reasons, but Denzel with Xavier Wulf again opens up a whole new door of possibility, one where Denzel might be able to tap the dark figures of the modern Memphis rap scene to create even more fire like this. UNLOCKED with Kenny Beats showed a great vison for the future of Denzel’s craft, but 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX is a statement establishing Zel as a jack of all trades when it comes to southern rap, cementing a legacy that doesn’t even feel like legacy yet because it’s still being made before us.

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