TA13OO - Denzel Curry
Denzel Curry packs his most extreme emotions into an honest and dark concept album split into three acts.
Setting the Scene:
Denzel Curry is a rapper from Carol City, a neighborhood in Miami Gardens, Florida. He began his music career with a mixtape titled King Remembered Underground Tape 1991-1995, that drew influence from SpaceGhostPurrp, an underground Florida rapper. The mixtape was featured by SpaceGhostPurrp on his social media and gave him exposure to the local scene. From here, Curry joined the hip-hop collective Raider Klan and released several more mixtapes which caught attention from more members of the hip-hop community. In 2013 however, less than two years after Denzel joined Raider Klan, the group disbanded, and Curry began his own solo career.
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Working quickly, Curry released his debut album, Nostalgic 64 by the end of that year. In 2015, he released a double EP and a song that gained massive popularity, “Ultimate.” Denzel Curry’s name was starting to spread and his second album, Imperial, featured established names in hip-hop like Rick Ross and Joey Bada$$. To put a statement on his rise, Curry was featured in XXL Magazine as a part of the freshman class of 2016, an annually selected group whose members are recognized as up and coming artists in hip-hop. He performed in the 2016 XXL cypher alongside Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, and Kodak Black. In 2017, Denzel continued to release track after track and released an EP titled 13. This EP would go on to be recognized as a teaser for his upcoming third studio album, TA13OO. After a string of singles from the album were released, in July of 2018, it was announced that the album would be released in three acts, Light, Gray, and Dark, each representing different mental states that Curry was in during the recording of the album.
Personal Thoughts:
Up until this point in Denzel Curry’s career, he had mainly delivered his raps with aggression and allusions to violence at the forefront. His approach garnered a lot of attention from some listeners, but it could be a bit off-putting due to its harshness. It felt like there was more under the surface to his words, but Curry rarely let us look under the hood of what caused these emotions. TA13OO still has the hard-hitting, aggressive, style of Curry’s older projects, but where it really shines, to me, is with all of the honest thoughts that are laid out to hear, which make it easier to connect with Denzel even when he is revealing the darkest parts of himself, the pieces that many consider to be taboo. At the same time, the songs on the track are infused with an energy that can pump me up for a workout and turn the volume up to eleven on my headphones.
From the beginning of the album, on the first track, also titled “TABOO”, Curry immediately shows that this album is unlike his previous ones. He begins by talking about a relationship and the woman he is seeing, he talks about the abuse she suffered as a child, and how he will always be there for her. In interviews after the album was released and in the chorus of this song, Curry also reveals that he has suffered from abuse as a child:
“All I’ve got is permanent scars and tattoos
Take another step in the path that you choose
Make a bad choice in your path then you lose”
Not only is this song a more sensitive representation of Denzel Curry, it also consists of more smooth and melodic singing from him as well, even if the singing also carries a darker tone to it as well.
On tracks later on in the album, Denzel gets braggadocios. On “CASH MANIAC” and “SUMO” he talks about his wealth and how he has made it. In this Light act of the album, he takes time to revel in his success and disparage the people that doubted him. Then, he moves to the second act of the album, Gray, where he starts to focus more on darker topics like paranoia and the political climate. One of my favorite tracks on the album, “SWITCH IT UP,” is about the fake friends and people who have started to gather around Denzel as he’s found success. One line in particular captures his mindset clearly and concisely in a few lines, and the thoughts that I’ve heard other celebrities express:
“They only know Denzel Curry (What?)
But they really don’t know Denzel (Okay!)
Everybody wanna ride waves (Okay!)
And jump when the ship don’t sail (Whoo!)”
This shows Curry’s simple and effective songwriting and even his ability to bring imagery into abstract topics like, in this case, trends. On “SIRENS,” he raps about police brutality and his anger about the political state of America. It’s important to mention that Denzel’s own older brother, Treon Johnson, died from cardiac arrest after being tased by a police officer. Curry even name drops Donald Trump specifically, showing he clearly is not a fan of his presidency at the time:
“Donald Trump, Donald Duck, what the fuck is the difference?
Now we stuck in a rut, this ain’t what I envisioned”
Through the chorus of the song and lines such as the one just mentioned, listeners are able to get a better understanding of where Curry’s anger may stem from on his other songs.
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In the final act of the album, Dark, Denzel expresses some of his darkest thoughts along with some features from artists such as JPEGMAFIA and ZillaKami. On “VENGEANCE,” Curry raps about taking vengeance on his enemies through malicious methods, and JPEGMAFIA does the same by taking shots at rappers like Drake and Tekashi 6ix9ine who he does not appear to have much respect for. This section of the album is almost absurdly aggressive, but the explosion of emotion here at the end of the album works well as a punctuation on all the anger and energy that has boiled up over the course of the rest of the album.
TA13OO is a dense dissection of Denzel Curry’s mental headspace covering many topics that are usually considered taboo by society, such as politics, murder, and molestation. For an artist that clearly has so much anger, it is rare to see so much of the reason behind it be revealed by the author itself. The album serves as an insight into a very talented rapper who loves to make bars about his favorite pieces of media like IT, Pokemon, and South Park, but at the same time has gone through all kinds of troubles and experienced some of the darker sides of the world as well. Check out some of the album with three of my favorite tracks below, and let me know your thoughts about Denzel Curry’s emotion filled concept album.