Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume

Denzel Curry emerged from Miami Gardens' Carol City neighborhood as a teenager, cutting his first mixtape while still in high school and running with the Raider Klan collective before striking out on his own. His catalog reads like a map of hip-hop's outer edges: trap cadences collide with hardcore riffs, punk snarl, and metal's low end, a mixture he has turned into a signature rather than a gimmick. The 2015 breakout "Ultimate" turned industry heads and landed him on the cover of XXL's Freshman Class the following year, but it was Ta13oo and Zuu that cemented his reputation as one of hip-hop's most restless stylists. He has covered Rage Against the Machine and Bad Brains onstage, toured alongside Billie Eilish and Turnstile, and built a live show known for chaotic, cathartic mosh pits. Now leading The Scythe, a rap collective of his own assembly, and reuniting with longtime collaborator Kenneth Blume for new material, Curry continues to treat genre boundaries as something to be crossed rather than respected.