I’m not a big fan of using comparative language when it comes to musicians – especially when they’re coming from different cultural backgrounds. Still, it only feels logical to compare Denzel Curry in his gestalt to David Bowie’s approach of chameleonic alchemist. Throughout his career, Zel has approached the rap genre to communicate cannibalistic cycles within the music business, shaped and abandoned styles and toyed with the destruction of genre limitations.
On TA13OO, he imagined an anarchist, Joker-like figure that retained shades of Marilyn Manson’s self-immolating Antichrist Superstar, simultaneously linking back to Kurt Cobain’s nihilistic grunge. In stark contrast, Melt My Eyez See Your Future was a therapeutic journey through rap’s history, a timeless masterpiece of aura and meaningful poetry. These albums are commentaries on the broken state of capitalism and explorations of heritage – they both ask questions and provide answers. They also ripped the future wide open: Curry proved he could be anything, and anyone.
King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 still comes as a modest surprise – a sequel to an obscure 2012 mixtape that pays tribute to the Memphis rap scene, stocked with guest appearances. The timing seems appropriate, as the internet has recently found out about the Memphis rap sigils, eight tapes that are said to herald dark occult energies harvested at murder sites. The narrative is a bit clunky and can’t be properly traced back and involved parties have denied there’s any truth to these rumours, but the story provides great context for the current reputation of 90s rap: here are obscure lo-fi recordings, packed with violent language and disturbing samples from often anonymous rappers. It played into the same media-related fear The Blair Witch Project exploited, documenting an era where you could find a run down analogue recording of… something you weren’t meant to witness. King of the Mischievous South Vol. 1 concentrated on this aura by masking as “Underground Tape 1996”, fully diving into a grimy, warped sonic palette, backwards samples and ominous voices included.
Vol. 2 isn’t interested to repeat this masquerade. Instead, it’s a more cleaned up, modern rumination on Southern Rap outside of the horrorcore genre. “Cole Pimp” introduces a luxurious Barry White sample that frames the track in a timeless, nocturnal metropole. The deep-bass heavy “Wishlist” is a great example of this: with its Blaxploitation-sample (right out of “Foxy Brown”) and sexual energy, it feels like a guaranteed summer hit. “Ultra Shxt” is another banger, reworking the Lo Key track “On That Devil Shit” to open the record on a quasi mystical beat. The track also draws a line to Memphis’ often forgotten genius (and Lo Key’s cousin), producer and rapper Tommy Wright III. Yes, this is a reference-rich release – but as with Melt My Eyez See Your Future, Zel is more so interested in heritage than just ‘cool beats’: his picks often illuminate an intricate web of cultural context and connective tissue that is lost in modern rap narratives and its journalistic reflection. “Lunatic Interlude”, for example, uses a lengthy sample of “Psychopathic Lunatic” to clarify Curry’s influence for darker tracks, like “Sked” and “Hoodlumz”.
So let’s talk about the album’s darker side: here, Curry dives into a transmutation of his trap styled Imperial. There’s an imposing aura to many tracks here, but they’re underscored by a joyful, energetic delivery that makes them easily accessible. Take for example the lead single “Hot One”, which features an alluring spot from TiaCorine and a great appearance from A$AP Ferg: it’s an incredibly catchy and punchy track that could have fit on the Gravediggaz debut. With its rumbling bass, “Sked” recalls early Tyler the Creator, while “Hit the Floor” goes for an altogether menacing tone of distortion and violent gangster rap, with Ski Mask the Slump God sounding absolutely unhinged. These tracks in hindsight only build up tension for the apocalyptic closer “Hoodlumz”, which has Zel, PlayThatBoyZay and A$AP Rocky unload a barrage of merciless bars and gunshots.
In a way, King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 sees Zel ruminate further about his heritage – the music that inspired him, the rap landscape of 90s Southern States, the images of Black men who travel nether realms (gangsters, pimps, warlocks). He uses these images to create brief flashes of character portraits and you can feel the fun he has doing so.
It’s not so much that he aspires to project the image of a hip hop necromancer (take note that the album’s artwork seems intentionally modelled on the Gravediggaz debut) – he’s more interested to unite a specific tone of the genre with his own impressions of that historical canon. Circling back on the Bowie comparison that opened this piece: so was the Briton when he adapted Krautrock and post-punk for his Berlin albums.
To Zel, the grills and rings that frame his portrait are parallel to the make-up he used for TA13OO: they are elements that create a mystique and ruminate on the nature of masks. Of course that’s a direct link to the horror genre – Leatherface and Jason and such. But King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 never situates itself in the same lower shelves of garbled VHS tapes as Vol. 1 did. Whereas that entry aimed for found footage appeal, Vol. 2 is a character piece in the vein of Scream. It doesn’t want to scare you shitless, instead using the framework to bring joy to those who can read its grammar. Or, to step away from the Horror comparisons: it’s is “Eastern Promises”, a romp full of playful macho imagery and gangster lingo.
In Curry’s larger oeuvre, it isn’t as obvious a heavyweight as his masterpieces. But it doesn’t make the argument that it has to, either. Here’s a young man who, for the most part of his career, used his talent to interrogate the nature of abuse, of inner turmoil, of depression. This is him using collective dialogue – with a large cast of varied characters – to have fun. And it’s infectious.
