Denzel Curry has dropped a high-octane single ‘SKED’ with fellow alt-rapper Kenny Mason, alongside an accompanying music video.
So far this year, the Florida rapper hasn’t dropped many singles. Before ‘SKED’, he teamed up with Southern Hip-Hop legend Juicy J for ‘BLOOD ON MY NIKEZ’ and released the ‘ICE COLD ZEL FREESTYLE’ with ICECOLDBISHOP back in July. He also dropped a semi-live EP with Spotify called ‘Live At The Electric Lady’ last May, on which he shared a cover of Erykah Badu’s 2000 classic ‘Didn’t Cha Know’.
Today (September 15), he put out ‘SKED’ and its creative, comic-inspired music video. The short David Wept and Jagger Corcione-produced track shows off Curry’s exuberant confidence despite rapping about his paranoia from growing up in Carol City, Florida. Kenny Mason also shows off his authority with clever gun wordplay over the bolshy instrumental. In the video, the 28-year-old and the Atlantan rapper Mason have fun dancing into the camera. Watch the video below.
The new single arrives after Curry performed four sold-out shows at the iconic Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, where Kenny Mason made a surprise appearance at one to perform their new collaboration.
In the press release, ‘SKED’ is said to “mark the beginning of a new chapter in Denzel Curry’s musical journey”, where “he is embracing spontaneity by sharing his music as it is being created, rather than holding onto songs until they released later as part of a larger conceptual body of work as he has done throughout the bulk of his career to date.”
In March 2022, the Floridian dropped his fifth album ‘Melt My Eyez See Your Future’, which NME gave five stars: “It’s hard to revamp your sound with every project, but Denzel Curry is fast becoming the Renaissance man of Southern hip-hop, always 10 steps ahead of the game. For the fifth time – and in a different way than we might have expected – Denzel Curry has provided a priceless sense of self-discovery as he explores his countless facets.”
Earlier this year, Denzel Curry collaborated with the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for “the ULTIMATE music kit” – which included his 2015 sleeper hit ‘ULTIMATE’ as well as cuts from ‘Melt My Eyez See Your Future’. Music kits are an in-game feature a player can buy to change the music in CS:GO, including the songs heard in the Main Menu, Round Start and End, and Death Camera.
Last year, his aforementioned fifth album ranked number 22 on NME’s 50 best albums list, saying: “Rapping over shimmering pianos and warm jazz samples, Denzel Curry was in full control as he took listeners through his most experimental album yet… [It’s] a crowning achievement, even for an artist who has already made a career out of defying expectations.”
Elsewhere, Mason dropped a series of EPs this year — ‘pr3’, ‘3’, and ‘6’ – following on from the highly-acclaimed success of his ‘Ruffs’ mixtape last year.