Hometown: Carol City, Florida.
The lineup: Denzel Curry (vocals).
The background: We’re not sure if Denzel Curry got the memo about hip-hop getting happy, but then he’s been through some tough times. He grew up in an area notorious for police brutality and gun violence (Zone 3, Carol City, Miami), and he has experienced more tragic events than any 21-year-old should: aged 16, he witnessed a shooting inside a local McDonald’s, only to run into the perpetrator the following day at high school – incidentally, the same school attended by Trayvon Martin. Then, in 2014, his older brother Treon Johnson died after being Tasered, pepper-sprayed and taken into custody by police in Miami-Dade County. “I think about death a lot,” Curry admits. The above tumultuous incidents triggered a depression that threatened to engulf the self-styled “black metal terrorist”.
“It’s like my world is reversing,” he groans on Me Now, a track from his new album, Imperial. “Even the pain couldn’t hurt me now. I cannot love cause it hurts me. I will be happy when the sun drown.”
“That was me in my darkest state, talking about religion,” says Curry, who grew up in a household with a Jehovah’s Witness mother and Baptist father. He wanted to plunge the world into darkness, to try to cancel out the misery he was feeling? “Pretty much.”
Curry’s music has been described as “afro-psychedelic punk”, and indeed there is a real urgency, even ferocity, to his breakout single, Ultimate (39m Spotify streams and counting). Then again, Me Now, or This Life – about splitting up with his girlfriend – are smoother and dreamier, like lovers’ horrorcore.
He cites as influences Nas and Doom and, in his own words, sounds like “the apocalypse destroying the Earth to the sounds of trumpets skating across the heavens played by angels”. Even if they’re not quite that cataclysmic, cosmic and immense, his songs have a lyrical concision and murky intensity, suggesting a riled SpaceGhostPurrp – Curry used to be part of the latter’s Raider Klan before falling out with his Miami forebear.
Certainly he earned his place alongside Desiigner, Anderson .Paak, Kodak Black, 21 Savage and a whole host of Lils (Dicky, Uzi Vert, Yachty) as a member of XXL’s 2016 Freshman Class. Reviewers noted an angry/trippy duality to his 2015 double EP, 32 Zel/Planet Shrooms, barking gruffly like DMX on the first half and channelling Andre 3000’s ethereal whimsy on the second. His flow has a Caribbean inflection (he is of Bajan and Native American descent) but he doesn’t want to be known just as a rapper, or even a rapper-singer (he does both on Imperial: think Drake in hell). He briefly attended the Design and Architecture Senior High School in Miami, and has retained a love of the visual arts.
“The art scene in Miami, and just my experiences running around with my friends being the youngest of the crew, was the dawn of the spontaneous realm that spawned my crazy life,” he says. This year, he performed at Art Basel in Miami; he still loves drawing, and his work is peppered with references to video games and cartoons.
“I draw stuff from my mind. I create characters. I might turn them into a cartoon or comic book,” he explains, looking forward, after this interview, to a live stream contest in which he will play Grand Theft Auto against fellow rappers Nyck Caution, Juice and Remy Banks.
He might be more Renaissance man than rapper, but it’s for his music that he’s best known. The tracks from Imperial – due for an official UK release in January 2017 – have had 17m streams on SoundCloud. The album opens with ULT, short for “ultimate” while also standing for either “ultimately liberating together” or “utilising limitless talent”. The title functions as a hard-hitting affirmation to match the staccato sonics, while the acronym has a more thoughtful quality, although Curry himself doesn’t consider he has much in common with the salubrious moralising of conscious rap. Any doubts about that are immediately dispelled by the vengeful, murderous closing seconds of Sick & Tired. His music is vivid (“Sodomised through the eyes of a troubled youth,” he raps on the deceptively mellifluous If Tomorrow’s Not Here) and viral – in both senses.
“I was in a very emotional state when I was writing that album,” Curry offers by way of explanation. “Life is dark. That’s what you gonna get with me: the dark aspects of life. Of course you’ve got to have some type of light in there, but if it was all light you’d be blinded. You’ve got to balance them out.”
Curry says he’s got to make this music, for his own sanity and health.
“Yeah, man,” he sighs, “cos otherwise I might end up dying, get cancer, from the stress, if I keep it bottled up inside.”
The buzz: “This is real rap, raw and uncensored. Stay woke.”
The truth: This is murkcore rap with melody.
Most likely to: Have an Imperial phase.
Least likely to: See the sun drown.
What to buy: Imperial is released on January 27 2017 on Loma Vista.
File next to: SpaceGhostPurrp, DMX, A$AP Rocky, Andre 3000.
Links: ultimatedenzelcurry.com/
Ones to watch: Sirma, Jennie Abrahamson, CaStLeS, Thom Hell, Oslo Parks.
