Lineup: Denzel Curry/City Morgue
Venue: Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA
City Morgue: The lone opener on the bill delivered one of the most ridiculous performances I've seen at a show in recent memory. This South Florida duo's 25-minute set was pretty weak from a musical standpoint as they mostly just yelled periodically while the backing track did the heavy lifting, but all of the extracurricular shit they did was bizarrely entertaining. The head-scratching highlights included someone from their entourage repeatedly coming out and spraying bottles of water on the audience, more calls for mosh pits and walls of death than you see at most metal shows, a couple of instances where they just jammed out to old Slipknot songs ("Spit It Out", "(sic)") instead of performing their own music and one half of the duo's repeated hype move of rolling around on the ground during the instrumental pauses. All of this madness got the crowd going early and while I doubt I'll ever voluntarily listen to City Morgue again, their live performance will not be leaving my memory anytime soon.
Denzel Curry: Curry has cultivated an image as one of modern hip-hop's rawest rappers. His unfiltered sound and DIY aesthetic has made him the unofficial ring leader of the Miami/Pompano Beach hip-hop scene, which has quietly become one of the genre's biggest talent epicenters over the past few years. Unsurprisingly, his no bullshit persona beautifully translated to the stage. To be quite honest, Curry's minimalism was a nice departure from the multi-million dollar spectacle I saw Drake put on last month. Visual effects are cool and all, but the music is always the important thing about a live performance and Curry wholeheartedly delivered in that area. Thanks to some jaw-dropping breath control that allows him to rap at extreme speeds and shit flows without any audible difficulty and his gift for shifting tones without compromising coherency, this set ended up being a nice mix of wonderous technicality and legitimate, wide-spanning emotional catharsis.
This mix of virtuoso rapping and visceral emotion makes complete sense since about half of the songs he performed are from his new record TAB1300, which I found to be his most dynamic and thoughtful effort to-date. The wide variety of styles and themes explored on that record allowed Curry to craft a set that kept their audience on their toes with a slew of different tempo and feelings while also never getting bogged down with pacing issues. As solid as his past work was, the sheer range of material on TAB1300 allowed Curry to maximize the effectiveness of his live shows.
If it wasn't clear enough, I came away from this show really impressed with Curry as a performer. I've felt that he is one of the strongest pure rap talents to emerge in recent years for quite some time now and seeing him live only further solidified that take. This kid looks like he has a long, bright career ahead of him and if the raucous response from this sold out crowd at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston is any indication, true stardom could be just around the corner.
Grades:
City Morgue: B-
Denzel Curry: A-
Setlist:
Denzel Curry:
Act I:
TABOO
BLACK BALLOONS
Parents
Denny Cascade
CASH MANIAC
SUMO
Act II:
ULT
SWITCH IT UP
SUPER SAYIN SUPERMAN
SIRENS
BLACK BALLOONS 2
This Life
MAD I GOT IT
CLOUT COBAIN
Act III:
Gook
PERCS
#ImSippinTeaInYoHood (XXXTENTACION cover)
Look at Me! (XXXTENTACION cover)
Equalizer
Ultimate
BLACK METAL TERRORIST
Encore:
Threatz
VENGEANCE
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