Unlocked (Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats album)

While Denzel Curry was touring for his 2018 album, Ta13oo, his manager, Mark Maturah, expressed interest in pairing Curry in a recording booth with Kenny Beats. Over a few sessions, the two made two to four songs, but none of the material stood out to Curry or Beats. The two had a feud over one of these beats being used by another artist as it was supposed to be used on Curry's 2019 album, Zuu, causing Curry to hate Kenny for "months". and was immediately followed up by the pair recording Unlocked. The tracklist looking the way it does was both intentional and unintentional. According to Beats, on the last day of recording, the album he opened the project on his iTunes contained unusual signs and symbols on its tracklist. Deciding that this would contribute to the energy and feeling of the project, he and Denzel chose to leave the titles the way they were. Stereogum and Complex reported that the recording session lasted three days. In an interview with Pigeons & Planes, Kenny Beats mentioned the three day frame of the project's recording, stating "72 hours sounds crazy when you're working at a normal pace but that can happen when someone works as hard as Denzel." The album cover is a homage to the cover for Organized Konfusion's Stress: The Extinction Agenda. ==Release and promotion==

The album was released on February 7, 2020. While there were no singles released prior to the album, an accompanying short film was released on February 6, 2020. Curry and Kenny Beats intentionally chose to have a lack of singles for the project. Curry stated in a video interview, "there's no singles, like, the project is the single." Going along with this creative choice led the two to develop the concept of an accompanying short film for the project. Deciding on no singles for the project, but still needing to "figure out a way to get people to tune into something long-form", the two engaged in a fake online beef on Instagram Live and Twitter in order to build up hype. ==Reception==

Unlocked was met with critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 81, based on 7 reviews. Salvatore Maicki of The Fader wrote that Unlocked is "a frenetic and saturated endeavor into two minds at the top of their game," singling out the track "DIET_" as the LP's "most savage peak." Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic stated that, "the set is a thrill to experience and begs for further collaboration." Alphonse Pierre of Pitchfork commended Curry's contributions but wrote that Kenny Beats' production work on the album was "too neat." Pierre added: Unlocked feels like it was made out of convenience—like going to Chipotle instead of the corner Mexican spot because it'll save you 20 minutes. It's good, sure. Curry is rapping his ass off. But Kenny Beats' production isn't anything new. There are no imperfections, no colors outside of the lines, and with that, it misses some of the heart that makes regional rap special. Accolades ==Accompanying short film==

The album was accompanied by a 24-minute short film, which follows the rapper/producer duo on their journey to retrieve the missing Unlocked audio files after they were leaked. Each track from the album is represented by a different visually stylized world in the short film. The film featured both live-action and animated segments. Portions of the animated visuals were done in claymation. Curry stated that he was influenced by various media from his childhood; he expressed wanting to do something "Gorillaz style" for "DIET_". Curry went on to state that Cowboy Bebop served as the base inspiration for the "'Cosmic'.m4a", and that the horror manga Uzumaki influenced the style for "Take_it_Back_v2". ==Track listing==

• Denzel Curry – vocals • Kenny Beats – production, engineering • Chris Gehringer – mastering • Nathan Burgess – mixing • J. Rodriguez – creative direction, design • Chris Wilson – artwork ==Unlocked 1.5==

}} On March 5, 2021, the remix EP Unlocked 1.5 was released, including guest appearances from Smino, Joey Badass, and Benny the Butcher, among others. ==Charts==