Denzel Curry05.03.25
Vancouver, BC
Back in 2019, my first time attending Osheaga, I remember arriving at the festival grounds on the first day and briefly catching the tail end of Denzel Curry's early afternoon set. I've been meaning to see him live for real ever since. It only took six years, but now here we are! On the other side of the country to boot, at the PNE Forum in Vancouver.
Denzel has put out two projects since then, including Melt My Eyez See Your Future in 2022, and his latest, King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 coming last year, a follow-up to one of his early mixtapes. It was expanded later in the year with some additional tracks and dropped simply as King of the Mischievous South. Not exactly sure what the thinking was there, but I'm all for some extra tracks.
This was one of those shows where they squeezed in as many openers as they could. It started with CLIP, 454, then Kenny Mason. I know Kenny Mason is the biggest name of the three, but frankly, I'm not familiar with any of them! I was really only there for Denzel.
PNE Forum was a bit oversized for this show -- I was there for Djo last month, where it was definitely a better fit. But it kinda actually worked out here; the pit was able to open up huge. Near the end of Denzel's set, the pit opened up straight through the crowd, right to the mixing booth. Never seen that before.
Denzel's set was a nice mix of of tracks from all of his recent projects, with some classics thrown in. Favourites from King of the Mischievous South being his opening track, "ACT A DAMN FOOL", and "G'Z UP" and "GOT ME GEEKED". And for the classics, "Walkin", "ULT", "Ultimate", and "CLOUT COBAIN" were all fantastic live. He came back out to close the show with his guest verse on "JPEGULTRA!" from JPEGMAFIA's newest record I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU. Off board pick, but super cool!
