Denzel Curry Gets Cinematic With Intense “SPEEDBOAT” Video

The video for Denzel Curry’s song “SPEEDBOAT” off of his fourth studio album, ZUU, which dropped earlier this year, was released today, and it’s guaranteed to impact you in serious ways. The video opens with a close-up shot of Curry, with a hardened, worn-out look on his face. He slowly closes his eyes, and a montage of the darker parts of his life in the drug game plays out. “You free to do what you want,” a voice says over the scenes of money-counting, gun-toting, and car-chasing, “But you don’t wanna put yourself in serious situations that you can’t get out of and once you get in here there ain’t no turning around.” This declaration is followed by a different voice saying, “when you ready to get up outta here, and make some real bread…” Curry raps the chorus a cappella, and the video expands on all of the brief shots we’ve just seen—an introduction to the on-screen Curry’s reality that we are about to witness.

The first of Curry’s prayer, a pre-chorus that appears twice in the song, follows a man talking about losing friends that were “like brothers” to him. Curry asks Jesus to pray over his people and deliver them from evil, a prayer that is given new impact as it plays over a visual of a swaying church choir in a field with folks behind them wearing white and holding hands with their heads bowed. The line about making “real bread” is repeated, emphasizing its significance to Curry’s temptation to level up, and the sacrifices he has clearly made to get there. Finally, we see the man who delivers this “real bread” line in the final scene, as he makes this offer to Curry to get out of his corner store counter job and work for him—the beginning of it all. The video could be easily be the best-made trailer for an intense and devastating action film about Curry’s experiences living in Carol City, Florida. Check out the masterpiece above.