Watch Denzel Curry Freestyle With Kenny Beats
For the past few months, my favorite thing on the internet has been The Cave, a biweekly video series from the great rap producer Kenny Beats. Once every two weeks, Kenny welcomes a new rapper into his studio. After asking for what specific type of beat the rapper wants, Kenny spends a few minutes putting together an on-spec track, and then the rapper goes into the booth and attempts to demolish that beat. It’s always worth watching, whether or not you even like rapper involved.
We posted the Maxo Kream episode of The Cave back in June. And since the show started late last year, there have also been great editions with Vince Staples, Rico Nasty, and Freddie Gibbs, among others. Another episode of the show has led to a minor viral hit, Zack Fox’s beautifully absurd “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression).” And now, we get the heartbreaking news that the latest episode of The Cave is the “season finale,” whatever that means. Fortunately, it’s a great episode.
For that season finale, the guest is Denzel Curry, the young Florida rap legend who just released the excellent album ZUU. The bulk of the episode, as with most of them, is in watching Kenny and the rapper clowning each other for at least 10 minutes before any rapping happens. This time, we get Kenny admitting that he was “salty” when he didn’t make it onto Beyoncé’s Lion King album. We get Curry stopping Kenny interruptions with this line: “You had your time to talk! You been talking for 400 years, man!” We get Kenny and Curry bonding over being friends with Slowthai, who just performed a new song with Curry this past weekend. We get Kenny shouting out musician Mario Luciano, the source of many of his fake-vintage samples. And we get Kenny making a Wu-Tang-esque beat and Denzel utterly demolishing that beat, reducing Kenny to overjoyed giggles. Watch it below.
ZUU is out now on Loma Vista. I would like the next season of The Cave to hurry up and start, please.