nowadays, I think Denzel is generally revered as one of the best hip hop artists in the modern era, with Melt My Eyez See Your Future solidifying that he could not only drop some quality songs but also be insightful and introspective in those songs as well. Knowing that, I was kinda disappointed upon listening to ZUU. I had heard Ricky off of it, and I liked it quite a bit, but I was expecting more from the album. Instead, it sounded kinda uninspired. Really basic sounding beats and boring bars about standard rap fare topics. Good flows to be found for sure, but nothing that made up for that lack of depth in my opinion. Luckily, it was quite short, so I didn’t have to listen to it for that long. However, that length reminded me of another Denzel Project that I hadn’t heard in a while, UNLOCKED.
Holy SHIT, UNLOCKED is maybe 10 times better and more refreshing. Yeah, we aren’t getting the introspective journey that we would end up getting on MMESYF, but this time that IS made up for by some of the tightest, most refined hip-hop ive seen put together. Getting Kenny Beats on a Denzel project should’ve been a no-brainer as the two pair so well together. Kenny’s off the wall creative production and denzel’s interesting and satisfying flows are the gift that keeps on giving. The album is only like 20 minutes long but it packs so much more into that 20 minutes than some hour long records do. Every time i go back and relisten to this album i catch something new and i appreciate the effort behind every second of these songs. One of the coolest projects of the 2020s that i think gets overlooked a bit due to how good MME is.