Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats: What Exactly is Being 'UNLOCKED?'
by James Ammirato
Less than a year ago, Kenny Beats started a YouTube series dubbed “The Cave,” presumably after his aptly named beat laboratory. The series is simple; he invites current rappers on the show, makes a beat in 10 minutes, and has the MC freestyle over it. It’s a fun thing to watch, each respective artist bringing their skillset to the table and (typically) knocking it out of the park. On top of this, a lot of the rappers are friends of Kenny, and a good amount have made collab albums with him that are typically well-received. 2018 saw Kenny working with Vince Staples and Freddie Gibbs, and just last year he collaborated with Rico Nasty and 03 Greedo. Now in early 2020, his series continues, this time with the unstoppable Denzel Curry, who’s been dropping projects left and right since 2016. The project was recorded in the 24-hour span following Curry’s appearance on The Cave, but what came out of the session, the 17-minute UNLOCKED, unfortunately, embodies the essence of the series in the worst possible ways; it’s rushed, unruly, and overall a poor matchup between rapper and producer.
The project starts with “Track 01.” Immediately we’re able to tell that Kenny has been listening to a lot of Madvillainy, and is very much playing to Madlib’s fanbase. I’m reminded of “The Illest Villains,” Madvillainy’s intro and the tone-setter for what’s to come. However, unlike MF Doom’s characteristic façade of a comic book villain, Curry closer embodies a cartoonish ripoff, and while the production itself is enjoyable, it’s hard to not instantly classify the track as simple Madlib worship. In recent years, we’ve seen something of a resurgence in the teamwork between an MC and a DJ, an exciting, dare I say nostalgic phenomenon, but it’s too easy to assign a classic status to any duo that fits the bill just because of their apparent status as an icon.
The album continues in a similar fashion, Curry typically starts tracks slowly, an admittedly bold technique for the usually fast-spitting lyricist, but by “Pyro” the system has become formulaic, and any additional vocal experimentation by way of filtering or auto-tune seems somewhat half-assed. Meanwhile, Kenny Beats’ production is experiencing welcome change. On other projects, I was concerned he was beginning to lean far too heavily on an 808-based trap beat style, a trend very obviously “of the era” so to speak, but much of the production on UNLOCKED leans more toward boom-bap, a refreshing addition to the established producer’s repertoire. The sample at the end of “Take_it_Back_v2” provides the cinematic atmosphere the album is trying to give the listener quite successfully. Curry’s laid-back nature at the beginning of “Lay_Up.m4a” also presents a nice variation to his usual style, but he proves later that he can’t keep it low-key, and I wonder if he’ll ever try to make his palate as diverse as he claims it to be. Another example of this is the intro, “I don’t write rhymes / I write checks” from “So.Incredible.pkg;” the couplet is delivered with such ease but is almost immediately tossed to the side for a rapid-fire delivery a verse later.
Further highlighting Beats’ artistic evolution is “Track07,” essentially his time to truly shine on the project. He seems to have been digging into more sample-based production, recalling such pioneers as DJ Shadow and J Dilla, and of course Madlib. I greatly appreciate Kenny’s willingness to update his style, which previously seemed on the brink of growing stale. He’s clearly taken this project to experiment with more chill ideas, an interesting choice considering Denzel’s most recent project was nothing but the hardest verses I’ve heard in some time, featuring the likes of Zillakami and Ghostemane. On “‘ Cosmic ‘ .m4a” Kenny takes the project home, the final 30 seconds being an outro that salvages the project ever so slightly, but still seems somewhat abrupt.
Overall, UNLOCKED left me rather disappointed. Although Beats’ production seems to be evolving more than people may be giving it credit for, the fault with this record lies in Curry’s rapping, which has (characteristically) not changed much. The two might work well in the context of Kenny’s studio, but in terms of the artistic partnership, there’s not a lot of reward that can be reaped from them working together.
On the subject of them being mismatched, I would love to see two separate projects come out of this. I’m speculating one with the same verses from Curry and different beats, maybe from FnZ or Ronny J, people Curry is already proven to work well with, and one with the same beats from Kenny, just with a different artist rapping over them, like Jpegmafia, or at least someone with more versatility. For now, I think Denzel needs to stay in his lane and do some more growth in the other direction, similar to 13lood In 13lood Out, before switching gears and doing a straight-ahead boom-bap project, even if it is with one of his homies.