By Melissa Brassard
From Chippy Nonstop to cinematic unions and cyber-goth grooves, the Ottawa multi-arts festival goes all in on the unexpected.
Denzel Curry Brings the Mischevious South to the North
Vancouver felt the full force of the Florida-born rapper’s Saturday night takeover.
By Cam Delisle
Photos by Arkin Pal
- Published on
Too many rap shows these days feel like playlists in motion—vibes, sure, but no velocity. Denzel Curry doesn’t do vibes. He does war cries, nerve endings, and serotonin-fuelling detonations. His Vancouver tour stop on Saturday night felt not only curated, but carved open, bled out, and screamed into the rafters.
From the jump, the crowd wasn’t watching—they were bracing. Curry took the stage like a man with nothing left to prove but everything still to destroy, ricocheting between albums with breakneck chaos: the glitched-out paranoia of TA13OO, the heatstroke nostalgia of ZUU, and the scorched-earth introspection of Melt My Eyez See Your Future. And of course, tracks from KING OF THE MISCHIEVOUS SOUTH were weaponized and flung into the pit like molotovs.
There was no illusion of polish. The mic crackled, limbs flew, and the floor shifted like tectonic plates. It was imperfect, primal, and alive, something too many polished arena shows have long since abandoned. The show ended, post-encore, with a blackout and a collective gasp, like surfacing after a near-drowning.
Curry cracked the PNE Forum wide open and walked through the smoke like a prophet with a busted amp. If this is what the future of rap looks like, it’s wearing steel-toed boots.
By Ben Boddez
The singer and cellist’s latest single blends dream pop textures with meditations on listening in a noisy world.
By Johnny Papan
From leather-bound poultry to intergalactic dance parties, BC’s biggest electronic festival delivered a new level of strange this year.
