Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats - UNLOCKED [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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“The leader among adolescents is likely to remain a leader till later life”

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The most successful individuals in hip-hop are the ones that are willing to change, plain and simple. Sticking to one sound stifles the creativity of an individual to the point where you (and the artist for that matter) *will* get sick of the sound. I read about rappers all the time, from the earliest days to more modern cats, lamenting about the music that they truly wish they could make and be accepted by the fanbase that they’ve created, but are too scared because of the backlash they’ll receive. I think the most prominent example of someone bucking this trend is Tyler, The Creator, who way back in 2012 was toying with soft soul and R&B influences, but it wouldn’t be until years later that he finally had the courage to put out Flower Boy, and fully lean into the music in his heart on IGOR. That kind of thing is happening everywhere, with music creators becoming more honest with their fans and with themselves, embracing the true creativity that lies within them. Some artists out there have ideas so scattered and so wide-ranging that you can never truly pin down their thought process, and they can come out of the blue and surprise you with their genius. This is true for not only rappers, but also for the producers, the ones who bring these musical canvases to life and are crucial to the life of the genre. Some people operate in one lane forever, but, just like rapping, you will eventually be left behind continuing like this (see people like Lex Luger and Metro Boomin). The best rappers, and the best producers, are the ones who “diversify their bonds” if you will, and have influences that extend out much farther than their immediate surroundings. Even more important than this, however, is a willingness to take risks, and if this describes any two people in the game right now, it’s the rapper Denzel Curry and producer Kenny Beats.

Denzel Curry (left) & Kenny Beats (right) in Kenny’s studio. Kenny Beats’ “The Cave” series has become a fixture in the left-field hip-hop scene, featuring such artists as EARTHGANG, T-Pain, & JPEGMAFIA

Denzel Curry, aka the Aquarius’Killa, aka Zeltron, is a person whose creativity has never known any limit. Growing up in Carol City, Florida, his influences consisted of a very potent dose of Florida legends: Rick Ross, Poison Klan, Trick Daddy, etc. But while this is his DNA as it were, Denzel grew with a whole host of other outside influence from punk and metal, salsa and merengue from his native area, and other meccas of hip-hop like Memphis. He has made a career out of hopping between various sound and aesthetics, but always bringing his trademark aggression and tough rap flows. Curry is a man with a goal to try new things and sounds, experimenting with the possibilities brought by his aggression mixed with other aesthetics. Starting from the earliest days of his career with the prolific RAIDER KLVN, he combined a shouted and overly violent vocal delivery with the instrumental fogginess of Memphis murder music, trading the smooth and measured flows of Lord Infamous with a brutish microphone attack that Zel brought to almost every track. As he matured in the industry, his mind wandered through various ideas like drugged-out cloud rap on Planet Shrooms, straight trap bangers on Imperial (which was my first exposure to Denzel as an artist), and culminating artistically on his three part epic TA13OO, telling the story of his life, struggles, insecurities, all while making time to blow your speakers apart with chaotic South Florida bass-shredding. Once TA13OO hit, people were very interested in where Curry would go next. Although his love-letter to Carol City history, ZUU, hit less than a year later, Denzel creatively took the year off to find himself again, deciding for himself where his sound would go next. It turns out the answer was “wherever in the fuck he wants to go”, because, out of the blue, then man drops a collaborative project with Kenny Beats that completely blindsides expectations. UNLOCKED, an EP coming in at about 18 minutes over 8 tracks, is a short but intensely potent foray into the world of boom-bap music, and another unexpected left turn for a man whose creative energy has yet to be muted.

Clout Cobain | CL0UT CO13A1N at 81 Million views on YouTube as of February 2020 is by far his most popular song, and among his most personal and well-written

While Denzel is still bringing a unique brand of aggression and flow on UNLOCKED, the influences for how many of his performances on here take shape are clearly different than past projects. On tapes like Imperial and 13, you can hear more modern influences like Meek Mill, Waka Flocka Flame, and of course various singers among the rock and metal communities known for their growls and hoarseness like Death Grips’ MC Ride. While the sounds here are still modern and digital, the framework is clearly rooted in the 90’s and the early 2000’s, and Denzel sees this energy and matches it in a unique approach to him. While he never gets into the lightning fast flows, there is the circus-like nature of Busta Rhyme’s cadence and vocal inflections on several tracks here. Another very clear influence at several moments is DMX, where while he’s always been latently in Denzel’s DNA on past releases, he’s able to let that spirit fly spectacularly on tracks like So.Incredible.pkg and especially DIET_, where the hook is so growly and scratchy that I almost for a second thought it was the Ruff Ryder himself. The way he sets up the punchlines and pulls of some of this goofy wordplay is clearly inspired by the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard and other members of the Wu-Tang, and it goes even beyond just the lyrical content: Pyro (leak 2019) and ‘Cosmic’.m4a both have Zeltron break into the classic throaty singing that Ason was known for, showing Denzel as, more than anything, a student of the hip-hop game that has clearly done his homework. To be able to go from something like the 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX a few weeks ago to UNLOCKED shows that his knowledge of the culture runs so much deeper than many of his contemporaries, and his fearlessness in attacking these completely foreign sounds is more than admirable, it’s inspiring.

32 Zel / Planet Shrooms was the earliest showing of Denzel’s passion for experimentation, taking the Cloud Rap scene to the limits of it’s sound

You know what else is inspiring though? Kenny Beats, whose journey to this project is one that has prepared him not just for this production detour, but for every unique beat he’s made since he hit the scene running in 2018. See, Kenny started his career producing for people like Smoke DZA and the TDE crew way back in 2010-2011, but whenever the money wasn’t making sense he decided to get into the EDM scene (rave festivals and all that jazz). He used his experience in the production landscape of electronic music, paired with his young urge to make boundary-pushing hip-hop, to make a return to the genre in 2017, doubling down on his passion for the culture and dead-set on creating the sounds of the future. What makes Kenny so efficient, so malleable in his sound, are the lessons that he learned while he was an electronic producer, and resources that he now has access to as a result of spending three years in an industry where producers are the everything, where they are respected so much more than hip-hop. A producer in this genre can grind for years and still be selling a beat away for a few hundred dollars, but the support behind an EDM producer is massive, and it’s the support than he still retains as an independent hip-hop producer. In the short time leading up to UNLOCKED, the man has produced whole projects for Rico Nasty, ALLBLACK, and Key!, while doing majority projects with Vince Staples and Freddie Gibbs. With that kind of resume, you can start to feel like you know what you’re getting into with a new release from him. Then you hear his new shit and realize he’s still hasn’t shown us a fraction of what he’s capable of.

Kenny Beats, seen here blowing the minds of thousands of white teenagers tripping molly

Kenny Beats is the other half of the genius of UNLOCKED, and, honestly, I’m not even sure if it’s an even split. While Denzel is in rare-fucking-form on this project, and shows a mastery of skills I didn’t even know he had, all of that can be said for what I’m hearing from Kenny on these beats. Up to this point, most of what I’ve heard from Kenny were amazingly detailed and catchy trap beats, unique in the ways they utilized zany and outlandish samples to create forward thinking music with a one-of-a-kind feel. He has an unmatched sense for the floor and ceiling of a mix, operating entirely in the extremes of his sounds with deep-rooted sub-bass and piercing samples from things like flutes and whistles. But almost all of this is thrown out of the window for UNLOCKED, with one key exception: samples. In fact, his sampling game is doubled in effort, with not only instrumental samples that make up the quirkiness and darkness of tracks like Lay_Up.m4a and Pyro (leak 2019), but also the world-building cartoon and movie samples found on his two instrumental tracks Track 01 and Track 07. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the unplaceable nature of Madlib or J Dilla, and although I don’t necessarily agree with the internet claiming this is the new Madvillainy (a label people are quick to throw around), I can definitely see the influence from that album, Donuts, an even more modern acts like Czarface’s 7L. I point out that last one because, while MF DOOM can be more esoteric, the fun-going nature DJ 7L’s production on albums like Every Hero Needs a Villain seems to be a very close family member to the brand of comically overblown boom-bap that Kenny is whipping up here, with the dustiness of the 90’s drums replaced with clean drum-packages, and the samples emoting with more color and vibrancy. ‘Cosmic’.m4a is the one that has the most in common with 7L’s style, with the speedy but steady drumline keeping low rumbling synths in pace; I could see this track on Czarface Meets Metalface easily. The stomping anthem Take_it_Back_v2, unsurprisingly, takes us back to a more DJ-centric vibe, with the scratching and running-back of vocals reminding of older MF DOOM beats, and chipmunked and deepened voices providing so much character to the album. With the exception of Lay_Up.m4a, whose drum pattern can’t decide whether or not it wants to go 90’s or more modern, the tracks here all draw from a clear boom-bap well, with head-nods abounding from the warm slaps. Pyro (leak 2019) with its psychedelic synthesizers is like a trip through a wormhole in a simulation, but at a low enough BPM for Denzel to be able to ride the pocket seamlessly. DIET_ is another with an abundantly clear pocket (which will go without saying from now on, Denzel thoroughly destroys), with these raw and dissonant kettle drums and very sharp and bassy kicks making up this cavernous instrumental; it also is filled, like many of the tracks here, with fantastical vocal manipulations on Denzel’s voice, stretching and warping words and phrases with high/low pitches an slow/fast-motion to make sure that you’re paying attention, and giving the album a tongue-in-cheek and unserious vibe. Lastly, and I don’t know if this is just me, but So.Incredible.pkg is for some reason giving me Nintendo vibes, with these faint tropical percussion notes reminding me of Super Mario Sunshine... Otherwise, this is one of the more detailed tracks here, with the bells and whistles filling out the track in an organized chaos that only Kenny is capable of.

A mind will only find it’s limit whenever it is pushed, and once pushed it will realize there is no limit. I don’t know if some other monk has said that shit before, but I thought it was relevant to both Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats’ journey through their musical careers. By reaching back to different times in hip-hop, with Curry and Kenny experimenting with the sounds of comic-book-inspired boom-bap, and coming off of releases that are stylistic entirely different from UNLOCKED in almost every way, the two are cementing their places as the foremost creatives in rapping and producing respectively. The thing about taking risks is that there is… well there is *risk*, a chance of failing or not reaching the expectations. But the thing about Kenny and Curry is that they never feel like they’re taking risks; UNLOCKED could have been vapid and redundant 90’s fetishism, but the creativity of these two men ultimately prevents that from happening. Hell, it’s so good that I’m not even upset at the lack of features, or even the fact that it’s only 17 minutes. Every minute is spent wisely, every word is in service of the motif; even the ARTWORK for this bitch is 10X harder than it needed to be! I’ll just end with this: creativity at this level is hella inspiring for people like me, and to see this kind of project pulled off with flawless execution is a boost for me. I expect great things from Denzel and Kenny every time, and as of February 2020 I’ve had yet to be disappointed.

Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music/Denzel’s Website