002: The Denzel Curry Cover Story

Highlights from my favorite assignment of the year.

Denzel Curry for Huck Magazine, shot by Matt Salacuse.

Back in October, I spent a day in New York City with Denzel Curry for the cover of HUCK Magazine’s 78th Issue. The Florida rapper is one I’ve been wanting to profile for years, and someone I’ve been following since the beginning—I’m talking the RVIDXR KLVN and Nostalgic 64 days. The experience didn’t disappoint: Denzel is open, intelligent, dynamic, and has a great sense of humor, and he was kind enough to allow me to spend the whole day with him, from sound check at Terminal 5, to going to ComicCon, to hitting The Gutter in the LES for some late night bowling. I learned all about his Muay Thai practice, the making of his latest studio album, which (spoiler) made my best of 2022 list, and more. Above all, Denzel is a generational talent, and it still blows my mind that he’s just 27 years old, with so much more to give.

Here are some highlights from the cover story:

On Melt My Eyez, See Your Future:

I wanted people to understand the aesthetics of hip-hop that derive from jazz and bebop. Trip-hop, hip-hop, boombap, RnB, all somehow made their way onto the album. I'm talking about everything that happens right in front of me, but I do it in a way that is very unconventional. I don't want to be the traditional rapper—or, I guess, musician. ‘Cause that's how you push things forward.

On his beginnings 10 years ago:

It couldn't have come at a better time—possibly the worst time of my life. I was 16 and was just kicked out of art school. Me making my first tapes and creating the work art and all that stuff was my ultimate revenge plan. I really needed a manager, and Mark stepped in for real. He had a whole plan mapped out, typing everything, a whole plan over Facebook, telling me what we were going to do from the beginning. I was just like, Aight let's do the shit. Fuck it. We went through everything together, from getting pulled over with police at nine, almost twelve o'clock in the morning in the Miami Shores and shit, to the gold beat up Lexus we drove around giving out, all types of stuff.

On being his own biggest critic:

I'm a very sensitive person. People are weird, people are rude, people are just assholes. As someone who always focuses on the negative, I feel like if I'm not being received, what's the point of doing this anywhere when people are just going to hype up stupid shit? But there was a point where I told myself, I’m not going to fail. You know what they say? High risk, high reward. The harder you work, the luckier you’re going to get.

On reverting back to his underground roots:

When I first started this, I said to myself, I don't want to be the best, I want to be a threat, and eventually it turned into I want to be the best. There’s less creativity and freedom in the mainstream, I feel like the game is more rigged now. So if I know I'm playing a rigged game, what do I do? Get to a point where I'm super good at what I do. But now I think about where I'm going with it. Now I'm resorting back to being a threat, that was better, because I'm threatening people's spots. In order to be a threat, you have to threaten someone's spot and you gotta work your way up.  If you're a constant threat, people are going to be intimidated by you. They're going to try to sabotage you every step of the way. The best has always gotta worry about what a threat is going to do.

Read the cover story here, and order the latest issue of Huck Magazine here. New Yorkers can also find the issue at McNally Jackson Books and Mulberry Iconic Magazines, both in SoHo.

Next week, I’ll be sending out my 2022 Year in Review, which includes everything I did this past year and that aforementioned Best Of list. Until then!