#half my videos are weirdly glitchy in a few places

[warlordfelwinter]

"I am just the stone... she is the hand."

[interesting-blog-name]

Denzel Curry MEGAREVIEW (ZUU/13LOOD IN + 13LOOD OUT MIXX/ UNLOCKED [w/ Kenny Beats])

Denzel Curry is a rapper I’ve known about since I started listening to the genre back in 2017, and one I’ve always enjoyed for the consistent energy he brought to every song he made. TABOO was one of the first records I listened to in its entirety (I wasn’t the type to go out of my way to listen to an album), and looking back at it, it was very ambitious, energetic, well-assembled, but did have its flaws and weaker moments. The production and Denzel’s voice were definitely highlights, but the lyrics and subject matter were sometimes lost in the midst of all the focused chaos of the album, even if more conceptual and deep tracks were to be found, such as the introductory title track, BLACK BALLOONS immediately after, one of my favorites, and THE BLACKEST BALLOON.

My younger ears were very fond of the grimy, bass-heavy music scene Denzel was closely related to as well, Florida rap’s punk-influenced, aggressive Soundcloud wave, which brought artists like XXXTENTACION, Lil Pump and the subject of this review to the spotlight. I was extremely drawn to the raw violence in the sound, and part of me still really enjoys it, a style very present in Denzel’s short but blunt and potent EP, 13. This familiarity and appreciation I had with his music were what brought me to listen to these three very short projects that I’d been holding back for quite a while.

 ZUU

Starting up with Denzel’s ode to his land, ZUU is definitely a change of pace to TABOO; the Florida native mixes his unmatched essence, flows and deliveries, masterful production and the traditional song topics and sometimes structures and samples from his homeland, into a tight, creative and, above all, fun project. Anyone can represent where they’re from in a rap song, but few could do it as creatively and interestingly as Denzel.

The production in this album is definitely a highlight: mostly handled by Australian duo FnZ, famous for working with A$AP Rocky in many occasions, Finatik and Zac, alongside familiar names such as Ronny J, Charlie Heat and Tay Keith, add a fresh, dynamic beat for every song they produce in ZUU, while still possessing an unmistakable texture and style to their production. The album is most definitely focused in its intended sound, ranging from the boiling title track, BIRDZ, or P.A.T. (probably one of Denzel’s most aggressive tracks ever), to the blissful WISH, or the less bombastic, but insanely catchy gospel-like SPEEDBOAT.

The only problem I have with the beats is they sometimes seem to be mixed weirdly; the higher decibels feel like they are mixed too loud on CARLOMART and SHAKE 88, which leads to some ear-piercing moments. Nothing that can’t be tolerated though.

The lyrics, again, are not a highpoint in the project. With the production and delivery present, they’d barely even have space to be so amazing or cutting edge. While Denzel deals with loss, overcoming his broke days, and even pays a very nice homage to his family in RICKY, the punchlines are not exactly groundbreaking, and they’ll let out a chuckle from the listener at best, and at worst, form a track like SHAKE 88, dwelling into the complex subject matter of twerking. I understand the why for a track like this, but it’s not like it’s executed well, as the beat is easily the most forgettable in here, and Denzel’s lyrics are way too oversimplified. But when Denzel has to deliver catchy and banging hooks and witty one-liners, he mostly delivers, and that’s what matters.

Still, you can tell Denzel’s song topics come from the heart when rapping about his upbringing and the environment he grew up in, such as in the second verse of AUTOMATIC. The features he brings are all from his state, from the legendary Rick Ross to upcomers PlayThatBoiZay and Kiddo Marv, and the features are some of the strongest parts of the album, as Denzel has such a nice chemistry with all of them that adds a lot to the songs, from Ice Billion Berg’s banging chorus (although it does become a little annoying when his vocals are pitched up) to PlayThatBoiZay’s raging verse, to even Rick Ross’ surprisingly fitting rapping, adding a smooth veteran touch to the very young, wild and free BIRDZ.

A very nice surprise in this album was Denzel’s singing and his hooks, as both has blatantly improved over time. While he’s no stranger to delivering a few chorus melodies in tracks such as Sick & Tired off of Imperial, the vocals don’t come close to those in the title track and WISH, and the hooks in both of the mentioned tracks, BIRDZ and SPEEDBOAT are phenomenal.

ZUU is a nice, clean and raw portrait of Florida, and that is exactly what it aims to be. While the album does get weaker at its second half, with skits that take up just a little too much time on a very short project and weaker tracks when compared to the insanity that was the first half, it is still very enjoyable for what it is: an explosive tape filled with bangers.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: ZUU, BIRDZ, RICKY, WISH, P.A.T.

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: SHAKE 88  

 7.9/10

“That was back in Carol City, yeah, when I was just a jit, with the all-black faded Dickie with the raider fit. That was it, we was lit, y’all wasn’t even shit yet. We was Three 6, Wu-Tang mixed with Dipset.”

 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX

Between these three, this was actually the first tape I listened to, and it is definitely the most aggressive Denzel’s been in a while. The mix is made in such a way to merge every song together into one big collection, so there’s not much of an option to listen to tracks by themselves, unless you don’t mind the abrupt beginnings and endings in every track.

Overall, this is obviously much more of a simple compilation, meant to showcase previously unreleased material, than an actual tape, as CHARLIE SHEEN, for example, was recorded back in 2018. Thus, the project isn’t meant to be taken as seriously, and isn’t even on Spotify, but I’ll still review it.

The most glaring problem I have with 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT is the fact that every single track is lo-fi, and it isn’t pleasing to me. I don’t know why the people behind the project would make the decision to tone every aspect of the production down and have it sound like the music is coming from an old phone’s speaker, but if you ask me, it surely takes away more than it offers.

The problem with toning the sound down is that the tracks could have been SO much harder if only the volume and mixing was normal. CHARLIE SHEEN’s chorus is seriously insane, Ghostemane’s feature doesn’t disappoint, EVIL TWIN has a very nice dark vibe to it and ZillaKami unsurprisingly fits the track perfectly, and WELCOME TO THE FUTURE has some of Denzel’s nicest singing ever, with what seems to be two different-pitch vocals stacked on top of one another, creating this very eerie but mellow melody; however, all of these tracks suffer from being mixed too low, especially EVIL TWIN: the track sounds like an Instagram snippet.

The other tracks in the project aren’t as memorable due to the fact that, without spicy features, Denzel’s solo work aren’t much more than appetizers, snippets that happened to find their way into here. NO PEN NO PAD has a very nice, unique beat, but that’s about it for the three tracks where Denzel raps alone. GOGETA is a track that wouldn’t be out of place in Act 3 of TABOO, the AK feature is nice, but Denzel isn’t super crazy on this one.

To me, it serves as a nice darker, more compact project by Denzel, with strong production and deliveries all around, not much in lyrical content - although I’ll say he has more freedom than in ZUU for wilder, meaner punchlines, as this project doesn’t focus as much on hooks and repetitions -and the features tie up the mix in a very nice way, but after the last project, what we’re left with is not as purely explosive and exciting, even if not lacking in creativity and vision.

The project’s highlights are the first three proper tracks, and after that, the listener just glides through a few impressive, but very barebones tracks until coming to a close with a relatively hard track, but unfortunately, as complained before, the mixing is not on 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT’s side.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: CHARLIE SHEEN, WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: PXSH6XD SHXT

 6.66/10

“All you niggas green, I don’t make a scene. Boy you half a man, I should’ve called you Charlie Sheen.”

 UNLOCKED (w/ Kenny Beats)

Kenny Beats has had a very successful run as a producer in rap for the past 2 or 3 years, rising to popularity working alongside artists like Rico Nasty, JPEGMAFIA, Vince Staples, and many other bubbling names. His style of production is glitchy, often aggressive, but also versatile and catchy, so a collab album with Denzel was bound to be something to look forward to.

UNLOCKED was released along with a 20-minute long music video that obviously isn’t the main focus of this review, but I’ll talk about it anyway. It portrays a very light-hearted, simple but colorful narrative of the duo voyaging into Kenny’s laptop to recover the leaked songs from the album, going through a different landscape for each track, with different art-styles and themes along the way. I will say the sequence for ‘Cosmic’.m4a is easily the most intense and is very well animated, but I also liked the clips for Track 01, Take_it_Back_v2, and Pyro (leak 2019). It’s a bunch of nice little visuals to accompany and give somewhat of a background and concept for the tape.

The tape and tracks themselves, in my opinion, are enjoyable, but nothing crazy. Kenny Beats’ production is solid throughout, but it is very fortunate this album is only 18 minutes, because it ends up sounding too one-dimensional when paired with Denzel’s verses. Don’t get me wrong, they are all great performances and I fully respect the decision to go purely with a more lyrical-focused, boom bap direction, but to me, it isn’t a style that can hold up for long without any experimentation or change in tone/beat.

Every track here has Denzel nonstop rapping throughout the whole tracks, without one melodic detour like became common in his last two studio albums; the hooks are still a strong central point in all songs except for Pyro, with the most notable ones in the tracks Lay_Up.m4a, DIET_ and So.Incredible.pkg. On the other songs, the chorus sounds just like the rest of the bars Denzel spits in his verses, except repeated like two times. On one hand it is a very focused and to-the-face project, while on the other, just a little bit of variety would have been more than welcome, especially since it’s a Denzel album, and I know he isn’t a stranger to it. The black sheep of the beats in the album is definitely its biggest song, DIET_, with its bongo, jungle percussion that is reflected in its music video. The headliner to this track, though, is Denzel’s DMX-inspired inflictions in the chorus, as he utilizes his recognizable raspy, growling voice, which isn’t used nearly enough in this album, him opting for a cleaner, more precise delivery.

The instrumentals in the project are very glitchy and creative with their use of sampling vocal clips, which bring a sense of cohesion and a boom bap, MF DOOM aura to the songs, but unlike many modern trap hits, they cannot carry the rapper, as unique and wild as they are; they need to work with the artist and unite to form a memorable, hard track. Luckily, Curry just so happens to be one of the best new-school rappers for the task that is bringing life to Kenny’s beats.

Truly, the main focus of UNLOCKED is Denzel’s bars and lyricism. The first few listens, I failed to grasp the fact that this was the main attraction to the album, and almost discarded the lyrics: “It isn’t anything conceptual, it doesn’t feel like Curry is trying to say anything of value in the songs, and the beats and infliction aren’t overly hard to compensate like in ZUU, so why bother?”, I thought, not in these exact words obviously. Listening again, watching Denzel and Kenny explain the creative process in Genius, and paying way more attention to the lyrics, I realized that I’m kinda dumb. Because yes, Curry might be rapping about the same things every rapper raps about: murder, money, threats, where he comes from, whatever, but it’s the way he says it that is captivating. Not every rapstar can mention Bubba Sparxxx, Rosa Parks and the second-best Indiana Jones movie in a chorus and make it sound as good as Denzel does, nor drop pop culture references quite like he does (“Turn your crib into a game of Fallout”). I failed to notice how colorful and lively Denzel’s bars were, as opposed to the sterile, empty threats and tired “Balling like [insert basketball player here]”, “Fast car, Nascar”, “Chase the money, don’t chase bitches” lines many other rappers employ in their rhymes, or even the lyrical miracle spiritual individual wack similes that conscious rappers try and fail to drop in their songs. And even when Denzel says something you can easily picture another rapper saying, the decisiveness and bravado with which he says so is intoxicating (“I don’t write rhymes nigga, I write checks”).

The aggressiveness is almost omnipresent, but when it isn’t, it is pretty noticeable. So.Incredible.pkg is the least interesting track by far, as the rhymes don’t stand out much, and the beat is definitely the deadest of the album. Meanwhile, tracks like the aforementioned DIET_, ‘Cosmic’.m4a and to some extent Take_it_Back_v2 are ruthless, with beat and lyricism teaming up to create the best this project has to offer.

The tempo of the tracks is fast and entertaining, the wordplay is mostly at Denzel’s best, and it seems Kenny can work with any artist’s specific style and improve it a ton, a little more subtly in Curry’s case. While it isn’t as flexible and full of surprises as some other Denzel projects, it makes up for it in how raw and centered it is. The album took a while to grow on me, but now that it has, I can see how unique in its influences it is. A very nice, bright creative effort by the duo.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: DIET_, Lay_Up.m4a, Take_it_Back_v2, ‘Cosmic’.m4a

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: So.Incredible.pkg

 7.35/10

“It’s the man of the hour. Super confident and the clothes yell it louder, and if it don’t compute then I gots to reroute ya. Dressed in all black like a motherfucking bouncer.”