The that means of the time period “mixtape” has shifted over time: As cassettes gave approach to CDs and later zip recordsdata, it developed from a format to an ethos. Within the streaming period, mixtapes have come to sign heritage. This yr, Future, Chief Keef and Mike WiLL Made-It, and Charli XCX, amongst others, have used mixtape aesthetics (or the phrase itself) to spotlight their ties to bygone sounds, scenes, and identities. For them, “mixtape” alerts not simply scrappier, looser songwriting, however lineage and context—the phrase an umbilical connection to the influences that nourished their fashion. Denzel Curry is in that headspace on KING OF THE MISCHIEVOUS SOUTH, a playful romp by way of Southern rap historical past that doubles as a private victory lap.
The brand new file is actually an expanded version of a equally titled album Curry launched this summer time, a sequel to his early mission KING OF THE MISCHIEVOUS SOUTH Vol. 1 Underground Tape 1996. That 2012 mixtape, recorded when Curry was a teenaged member of gothic rap collective Raider Klan, was additionally a piece of geographic homage: Shrouded within the Raiders’ signature mixture of eldritch Memphis horrorcore, slurry Houston screw, and raunchy Miami bass, Curry spent a lot of the tape pantomiming and sometimes naming his influences. His fashion is much extra self-possessed and versatile now, refinements that information the rapper’s tour of the outdated and new South. The low-stakes outing presents the thrills of a video-game speedrun, familiarity accenting Curry’s virtuosic turns.
Like Curry’s ZUU, an intimate ode to generations of Miami rap that was primarily produced by two Australians, KOTMS isn’t overly involved with constancy. On the mic and behind the boards, varied non-Southerners, from Harlem’s A$AP Ferg to Seattle’s ex-Raider Klansman Key Nyata to Milwaukee’s Bizness Boi, make appearances alongside artists from Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee. Whereas the vocalists usually share some sort of religious or stylistic connection to trunk music, Raider phonk, or South Florida, the free definition of the South lets Curry keep away from the devotional revivalism of a Massive Ok.R.I.T. or Spillage Village file. (Curry has even bypassed the cliche of getting Massive Rube host the file, as an alternative tapping Memphis vet Kingpin Skinny Pimp.) The mischievous South is extra a sensibility than a bloodline.
