The meaning of the term “mixtape” has changed over time: As cassettes gave way to CDs and later zip files, it evolved from a format to an ethos. In the age of streaming, mixtapes have come to signal legacy. This year, Future, Chief Keef and Mike WiLL Made-It and Charli XCX, among others, have used the mixtape aesthetic (or the word itself) to highlight their ties to past sounds, scenes and identities. For them, “mixtape” signifies not just more unusual, looser songs, but lineage and context—the word an umbilical connection to the influences that nurtured their style. Denzel Carrey is in that headspace KING OF THE HARD SOUTHa playful romp through southern rap history that doubles as a personal victory lap.
The new record is essentially an expanded version of a similarly titled album Curry released this summer, a follow-up to his early work KING OF THE SICHIEVOUS SOUTH Vol. 1 Underground Tape 1996. This 2012 mixtape, recorded when Curry was a teenage member of the gothic rap collective Raider Klan, was also a work of geographical homage. of the tape verbatim and often naming his influences. His style is now much more self-directed and flexible, improvements that guide the rapper's tour of the old and new South. The low-stakes outing offers the thrills of a video game speedrun, the familiarity that accentuates Curry's dexterous turns.
Like Curry's ZUUan intimate ode to generations of Miami rap produced primarily by two Aussies, KOTMS not overly concerned with fidelity. On the mic and behind the boards, various non-Southerners, from Harlem's A$AP Ferg to Seattle's former Raider Klansman Key Nyata to Milwaukee's Bizness Boi, perform alongside artists from Texas, Georgia and Tennessee. While the singers generally share some kind of spiritual or stylistic connection to trunk music, Raider phonk or South Florida, the loose definition of South lets Curry avoid the cult revival of a Big KRIT or Spillage Village record. (Curry has even sidestepped the cliché that Big Rube will host the record, tapping Memphis vet Kingpin Skinny Pimp instead.) The roguish South is more sensibility than bloodline.
