UNLOCKEDis out nowvia PHRecordings“No matter who I played the album for,Rick Rubin, Madlib, Ski Mask the SlumpGod—that line made EVERYBODY laugh.I’m playing this for people in their mid-50sand people in their early 20s, and everyoneis having the same reaction. That’s how youcan tell Curry is really striking a chord.”Their frenetic recording speed was helpedby the fact that both Curry and Beats aremagnetic, energetic extroverts, permanentlydialed up to 11. “Denzel’s personality is likehe’s in the middle of the Superbowl at alltimes. He’s so hype, he’s got so much passionand energy, and he’ll put anything on theline to get his point across,” Beats explainsexcitedly when talking about the youngerrapper. Curry says the exact same about hiscounterpart: “Kenny’s just as animated as Iam. We’ll goof off in the studio, but when weget to work, we get to work and we get shitdone. That’s how it was, and why we wereable to do this whole project in three days.”The track titles on UNLOCKED are a slynod to the mid-’00s piracy era of the musicindustry. Before streaming and Soundcloudswallowed the music industry whole, ThePirate Bay and its sketchier predecessorLimeWire were must-haves for any industriousyoung person looking to reload theiriPods with brand-new MP3s. More oftenthan not, the downloads would come withunpolished name like “Take_it_Back_v2,”“Pyro (leak 2019),” and “So.Incredible.pkg”– to name just a few of the many memorabletrack titles on UNLOCKED.According to Curry, this naming schemewas a premature middle finger to critics.“We made this project in three days, and weknew critics were going to say ‘oh, it doesn’tsound finished, blah, blah, blah.’ Wewanted to say ‘shut the fuck up’before they even had the chance tosay it, so we made our track nameslook like our session file names orsome shit you’d get when you piratemusic.” They got their point across:on repeated listens, UNLOCKED’sdeliberate rawness feels like afeature, not a drawback.Despite the multi-faceted rollout,which included the pair getting into a fakespat, leaking their project, and then releasinga short movie slash music video wherethe two transmogrify themselves inside aseries of animated cartoons, UNLOCKEDavoids gimmick entirely. Made at breakneckpace and stripped of any excess, it’s a pureexercise in experimentation by two technicianswho are at the peak of their abilitiesand know it.Curry’s main takeaway from the collaborationis that while there’s value in honing hiswork to perfection, his first instinct is usuallythe right and most exciting one. “I knewme and Kenny were good, but I didn’t knowthat we were good enough to make an albumin three days. We didn’t plan it, it was juston the fly. We figured out the sound, how wewanted to package it, everything all at once.”For Beats, UNLOCKED symbolizes theway that creative discomfort and uncertaintycan be channeled into urgent, immediateart. “The number one selling-solo pianoalbum of all time is Keith’s Jarrett’s KölnConcert, and that was played on a broken,detuned piano,” he muses. “The greatestpiano album of all time is on a broken instrument,you see what I’m saying? Sometimesit takes that discomfort to break through.When you don’t know where you’re going,where you can end up is boundless.”By ISAAC NIKOLAI FOXARIS CHATMANCOVER“I KNEW ME AND KENNY WEREGOOD, BUT I DIDN’T KNOWTHAT WE WERE GOOD ENOUGHTO MAKE AN ALBUM IN THREEDAYS. WE DIDN’T PLAN IT, ITWAS JUST ON THE FLY. WEFIGURED OUT THE SOUND”DENZEL18 26 BEATROUTE MARCH 2020
MARCH 2020 BEATROUTE 19