SAMPLEDKenny Beats Unlocked 2: Denzel Curry's II Sequel, Aug 21
Kenny Beats Unlocked 2: Denzel Curry's II Unlocked sequel lands Aug 21 with JPEGMAFIA, Westside Gunn and Yebba — tracklist, dates and the rebrand.
On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, Denzel Curry and the producer formerly billed as Kenny Beats announced II, a nine-song album arriving digitally on August 21 via Loma Vista Recordings, with a physical release following on December 4. It is the proper sequel to UNLOCKED, the 17-minute cult record the pair dropped in February 2020 and then reworked as UNLOCKED 1.5 in 2021.
The announcement came with the album's closer, "Difference," featuring Yebba, plus a retro-styled video.
The tracklist
- Gone Fishing
- Evil Grin (feat. JPEGMAFIA)
- Candlelight
- Product
- UPS
- Benjamin
- Cold Night in Hell
- Crown (feat. Westside Gunn)
- Difference (feat. Yebba)
Nine tracks, three features. That is a deliberate scale. UNLOCKED ran eight songs in under 18 minutes and treated brevity as the point — a corrupted-file aesthetic, chopped loops, no radio ambitions. II keeps the shape and widens the guest list without breaking it.
Kenny Beats is now Kenneth Blume III
This is the first Curry collaboration released under the producer's new name. The rebrand to Kenneth Blume III has been rolling out across his recent work, and it reframes him from meme-adjacent beat-battle personality to a credited album author. If you have been searching for "new Kenny Beats album" and finding nothing, that is why — the credits now read differently even though the partnership did not change.
In the announcement, Blume said: "The work Denzel and I do has never been easy, which is why it's so rewarding. We've started every project on opposite sides of a coin and fought our way to the center. When I hear this album I hear the growth and the fight in equal parts."
Why the features matter
- JPEGMAFIA on "Evil Grin" — Peggy and Curry have circled each other for years across the same abrasive, sample-warped corner of rap. On a Blume beat, this is the most predictable-on-paper and most likely-to-be-violent track on the record.
- Westside Gunn on "Crown" — the Griselda import is the outlier. Gunn's ad-lib-forward, soul-loop style does not obviously match Blume's digital grit, which is exactly why it is the track to watch.
- Yebba on "Difference" — a soul vocalist closing a rap album is the tell that II is not just UNLOCKED again. It is the sequel giving itself an ending.
The release strategy
A nine-day gap between announcement and digital release is a short fuse by 2026 major-label standards, and it is the same play the duo ran in 2020, when UNLOCKED appeared with almost no runway. The December 4 physical date is the part worth noting for anyone tracking how rap catalogs are monetized now: the vinyl window sits four months behind the stream, which turns the record into two separate news cycles and two separate pre-order pushes.
For fans, the practical version is simple. The digital album is out August 21. Physical pre-orders run through the official store ahead of the December 4 street date.
What to listen for
UNLOCKED worked because the constraint was audible — Blume built out of degraded samples and Curry rapped like the file was going to corrupt mid-verse. Six years later both men have bigger discographies and less to prove, and the risk with a sequel is polish. The early evidence, "Difference," is a full song with a real vocalist and a real hook, not a 90-second sketch. Whether the other eight tracks hold the original's claustrophobia or trade it for range is the actual question II has to answer on August 21.