Denzel Curry is announcing that he will present and perform at two shows during Miami Art Week on Friday, December 2nd, and Saturday, December 3rd. Satellite Art Show and Pérez Art Museum have partnered with Queens, NY based outsider music venue Trans-Pecos to create a music program at Miami Art Week. The main events on Friday and Saturday take place at The Parisian and will feature music and visual art curated by South Florida native Denzel Curry as a part of his Vortex party series, featuring performances by his C9 Collective. The event will also feature Show Me The Body, Allan Kingdom, Lajan Slim, Zoey Dollaz, Sick Feeling, as well as unannounced special guests. With Curry’s long-time connection to the underground Miami art scene and being closely affiliated with peers like Sebastian Ruiz and the Metro Zu collective.

About Denzel Curry and Imperial:

There was the moment when, at 16, Curry was witness to a shooting inside a McDonalds (“Something was telling me, ‘Denzel, get your food and get the fuck outta there'”) and ran into the shooter the following day at school–the same high school Trayvon Martin attended. Or there was the incident in 2014, when his older brother, Treon Johnson, died after being Tasered, pepper sprayed, and taken into custody by police in Miami-Dade County. His grandmother died the same week. “I think about death a lot,” Denzel says. “The thought of it doesn’t scare me, but when it actually gets down to it, I always think about what’s gonna happen: Will I fold? Will I cry? Will I scream? Will I be silent–will I just accept it?”

Unlike other artists who are fixated on the morbid, Curry’s music isn’t sprawling or indulgent, trite or aphoristic. Instead, his acute sense for the less savory parts of his life has manifested in hip-hop that’s laser-focused, that sounds steeped in the headier approaches of the genre’s greatest technicians yet remains distinctly Southern. Originally a member of the SpaceGhostPurrp-founded collective Raider Klan, Curry quickly distinguished himself as one of the network’s sharpest pens. The collective writ large was noted for reviving flows and production motifs that had been popular elsewhere in the South–particularly in Memphis–during the ’90s, but Denzel also cited influences like Nas and MF DOOM; he can recount in detail the time he first heard Lupe Fiasco’s “Kick Push” on the radio and asked his mom for Food & Liquor.

By the time Raider Klan was splintering, Curry had already left and distinguished himself as a separate entity, fascinating in his own right. The first project that brought him broad acclaim was 2013’s Nostalgic 64, a knotty, frequently brilliant record that delved further than ever before into the depths of Denzel’s psyche. “I had already seen the light side,” he says of his upbringing in a household where his mother was a Jehovah’s Witness and his father a Baptist. “But it was when I really started channeling my dark side that my music started to change rapidly.”

And indeed, that development might have happened too quickly for some to keep up. In June of 2015, Curry dropped 32 Zel / Planet Shrooms, a double-EP that saw him move away from his formalist roots and embrace chaotic, synth-led sounds. “I didn’t like the reception 32 Zel / Planet Shrooms got, because I feel like nobody got what I was trying to say,” he says now. “The way it was perceived, that clouded everybody’s judgment about my music and about my craft. Nobody thought I could top Nostalgic.”

Released this March, Imperial was both his finest work to date and his best received. The brief, breathless album showcases his technical skill along with a newfound maturity in his songwriting. “I was going through a dark time,” Curry says now of the time that birthed Imperial. So he challenged himself to find a radical level of transparency. “The whole theme of that tape is just being honest–exposing myself before anybody else does, talking about my past, talking about where I’m heading to.”

He goes on to expand on that philosophy, saying, “I couldn’t be something I’m not. If I’m lying on tracks, somebody eventually is gonna catch me on my bullshit. I’m not gonna let that happen. I’d rather keep it as blunt as possible. If I don’t know something, I’m gonna let you know I don’t know it.” As rap changes and evolves, always slippery and always volatile, it requires someone with his unique combination of versatility and conviction to survive. And for the time being, that’s all that’s in the plans. “At the end of the day I’m from here,” he says of his home in Florida. “My fans are here, my friends are here, my family’s here. I was born here. The only thing I don’t wanna do is die here.”

Denzel Curry
Imperial
Tracklisting

1. ULT
2. Gook
3. Sick & Tired
4. Knotty Head (featuring Rick Ross)
5. Me Now
6. Story No Title
7. This Life
8. Zenith (featuring Joey Bada$$)
9. Good Night (featuring Twelvelen and Nell)
10. If Tomorrow’s Not Here

Denzel Curry presents The Vortex at Miami Art Week

Friday, December 2nd, 6pm -12am at The Parisian
Ski Mask The Slump God
NELL
Sdotbraddy
Yoshi Thompkins
Show Me The Body
Deli Girls
w/ Special Guests

DJ SETS TBA

Saturday December 3rd, 6pm -12am at The Parisian
Zoey Dollaz
Lajan Slim
Allan Kingdom
JK The Reaper
Steven A Clark
Sick Feeling
w/ Special Guests

W/ DJ SETS BY: LTENGHT & MORE TBA

Tour Dates

11/22 – Nashville, TN – Exit/In
12/6 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
12/7 – Warsaw, PL – Hydrozagadka
12/8 – Berlin, DE – Yaam
12/9 – London, UK – Jazz Cafe
12/10 – Brussels, BE – VK Club
12/11 – Paris, FR – Le Bellevilloise
12/30 – Gisborne, NZ – Rhythm & Vine Fest
12/31- Perth, AUS – Origin NYE Festival
1/3/16 – Auckland, NZ – Kings Arms
1/4/16 – Sydney, AUS – The Basement
1/5/16 – Melbourne, AUS- The Toff in Town