ZUU - Denzel Curry: Review
Denzel Curry
is a well established Florida rapper who has released some of the most critically acclaimed hip hop albums of the past 5 years. On the back of his mega hit and meme feature Ultimate Curry dropped two critically acclaimed studio albums Imperial and Taboo and has now returned with yet another project after coming off of two excellent singles in Ricky and Speedboat.
Review By Lavender:
Denzel Curry has been nothing but sharp for years now. Even if some of his earliest material was punching below his weight once Ultimate took off Curry proved that he made it for a reason and dropped the cutthroat and excellent Imperial in 2016. This was followed by one of my favorite EPs of 2017 the similarly hard hitting 13 and finally in 2018 he dropped an album that ended up landing in my top 15 of the year Taboo. Given that Taboo was thematically as dark but executed a wider variety of sounds with even sharper consistency it was clear that Denzel was evolving quickly as an artist and I was very excited to see what he would do next. Now that ZUU is upon us it makes sense why the turn around was so quick, as this album has far less variety than Taboo and sees Curry sticking to his guns for the most part, proving that what he does, he does well.
The first half of this thing contains one killer track after another, including the two great singles that got this project started. RICKY is an absolute banger with one of the catchiest hooks I've heard all year and a very tight flow. This is a total callback to some pre-Taboo Denzel Curry, as is much of the rest of the album, but he seems to be bringing a whole new level of quality to the songwriting and performances here. The second single SPEEDBOAT is another solid track that features a banging beat and some hilarious quotables, my favorite being the out of place bars "Word on the street, everything heat, everything hot boy, Texas Pete". These two tracks made it very clear what this project was going to sound like and for the most part it sticks to its guns with a series of short and hard hitting bangers,
The opening track ZUU is a solid intro cut that is a short nondescript banger but one that sets the tone for pretty much everything that is to come. WISH is a song that turned out to be one of my favorites here with an impossibly catchy flow that bounces from Denzel shouting out where he's from and the people who helped him get where he is today, to some macho bragging about his astounding success. The track also features a great guest verse from Kiddo Marv and the whole thing adds up to one excellent summertime banger.
BIRDZ is quite a hard as nails track that pulls from southern hip hop with its entrancing background effects and hypnotic beat. Despite not being the loudest song here Denzel and featured guest Rick Ross go off over a classically dark and hard-hitting beat that helps keep the energy going strong in ZUU's first half. And finally AUTOMATIC is a pretty sharp song produced by Tay Keith. Tay brings some rattling trap inspired high hats to the mix as well as some killer keys as Denzel channels Lil Nas X with a borderline country rap sung hook. The song is pretty uninteresting from a songwriting standpoint but it is pumped so full of personality that vibing to it is basically compulsory.
Unfortunately while the album gets off to a great start the second half is so spotty that I would consider nearly all the tracks here skippable. The album contains a handful of interludes placed inexplicably close to each other and while they don't necessarily drag the energy down I am a little confused by their inclusions on a project that isn't really trying to be thematic in any way. Regardless they muddy the tracklist and don't usually stay interesting throughout their short runtimes.
The problems don't stop there though as CAROLMART is by far the weakest song here. Denzel brings some solid lyrics on the verses but its a flow he has done so many times before and one that is even executed better at other points on this album. The hook is a total miss and the bridge is more annoying than anything else, the track just feels rushed and some of the cracks in Denzel's game show during its weakest points. SHAKE 88 features a broken flow that I can't stand and seems like such a weird choice to include for such a clearly talented artist. The chorus is vapid and not very catchy and just so clearly inferior to so much else of what is here.
Thankfully there is one highlight in the albums second half, the closing track P.A.T. Denzel does what I had been waiting this entire project for him to do and recruits frequent collaborator Ronny J on production and the results show. The track is the most relentless, balls to the wall banger here and is far more aggressive than anything else on ZUU. The beat is heavily distorted and completely unrelenting, Denzel's borderline screams manage to fit into a pretty sharp flow and his brutal performance is a great way to end the record off.
ZUU is not perfect and it doesn't really stand up to Denzel's past two excellent records but it also doesn't feel like it was supposed to. The lack of variety in what appears here makes it very clear that this is Curry releasing a brief project full of bright and catchy summer jams to tide his fans over into the next era and for what it is, the album is quite good. Even given the lack of variety and the lull in the second half of the tracklist there is plenty here that is fantastic and in the era of "vibe tapes" Curry once again proves to be head and shoulders above much of his contemporaries with an album that doesn't pretend to be anything it's not and consistently executes on its formula. 7/10
Best Track: Ricky
