Denzel Curry and Kenny Beat's - "UNLOCKED"

 

Happy March WHOOOO!! Can’t believe we’re in month three of 2021, time’s flying by and I think I’m starting to hear the walls talk to me. Another thing that’s been talking to me was the new music that we’ve got going on this week. We had a surprise drop from Drake with three songs followed by other singles from artists such as Tyler the Creator, Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars aka Silk Sonic, an album from Drill rappers Lil Durk and his bros and the special of this week’s post, UNLOCKED 1.5 with Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats.

Before we get into it, I just wanted to give a couple of words on the music I listed above:

·         Drake’s Scary Hours 2: What’s Next and Wants and Needs ft. Lil Baby are good songs, while Lemon Pepper Freestyle was a little lacking in my opinion. The beats are nice and it’s always a nice time to hear Drake groove out.

·         Silk Sonic’s Leave the Door Open: Great song, I think that it’s a breath of fresh air having these two artists put in effort in recreating older sounds of funk and R&B. I’m looking forward to this future album and I hope we hear nothing more goodness from these two.

·         Only The Family’s Lil Durk Presents: Loyal Bros: Average album that has similar trap beats as Lil Durk and his fellow rappers bounce off of lyrics that go over topics of gang related material. I know this is a project paying homage to all the artists and friends Lil Durk made and lost along his path to success so I give my respects but in terms of music quality, it was aight. Songs I enjoyed were Sip Again, Hellcats & Trackhawks, Chess, and Glaciers.

 

Ok, now we can talk about UNLOCKED. So, this isn’t my first time listening to this project, but I honestly forgot all about it when I saw UNLOCKED 1.5 this week. It was when I was listening to 1.5 on stream, did I realize through from a follower that these songs were pretty much remixes or take two’s of the original songs in the project. So I hopped over to check those songs out… AND I FOUND A VIDEO ALBUM?!!? OK, you guys probably know at this point how much I love concept albums and the potential concepts outside of the auditory sphere can have on music nowadays with themes of space, adventure, and storytelling. However, this video album blew my mind because it felt like I was about to watch a movie starring one of the incredible rappers of the modern time, Denzel Curry. So I watched the half hour special, and it was a JAM (no peanut butter). The video goes over a story of producer Kenny Beats and rapper Denzel Curry finding out that their music has been leaked by an unknown figure, leading Kenny to believe that they need to plug in their minds to the computer to trace the files. Think of this as Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase BUT WITH MUSIC. Each song of the project has Denzel and Kenny going through a unique scenario based on their favorite media that each incorporate a unique animation style. For example, Take_it_Back_v2 is based on a Japanese manga animation called Uzumaki while the next song Lay_Up.m4a is based on Scooby Doo. With each new animation style following a new song, it felt like a constant breath of fresh air as I was excited seeing what was in front of me while being curious on what would happen next. The finale with the song ‘Cosmic’.m4a has these two artists finding their evil computerized selves and holy canoly was it was a great time.

This opened my eyes to so much because this is a perfect example of how technology can further the potential music has. To have a movie alongside a project to help create visuals for the audience, this made me enjoy the project more than any past music video has done before. This is what I’m talking about when I say the ideas of concept albums are limitless. These two artists decided to create a crazy story, add some music with good mix of creativity, fun, and effort… and boom you get a fun experience. This didn’t make me think that I was listening to a whole new project by the artists but rather an inspired original soundtrack to a show. The idea of watching movies and enjoying a project with it sounds amazing to me, and I hope artists that delve into concept albums like Kid Cudi, Logic, and Tyler, the Creator look at this and try to take their own take on things. This, to me, overall broke the current standards I had with current visual assistants to music and I hope I see more of this in the future. Check this project out and let me know what you think! Peace!

 

**ANY MUSIC THAT IS DISCUSSED IN THIS BLOG IS NOT OWNED BY ME AND BELONGS TO THE ARTIST AND HIS/HER RECORD LABELS RESPECTIVELY**

 

My Favorite Songs: So.Incredible.pkg, Take_it_Back_v2