Kenny Beats

One Liner:  DJ guy who will apparently just play a bunch of other people's rap snippets

Wikipedia Genre:  Hip hop, R&B, punk, jazz

Home: Greenwich, CT

Poster Position: 10
Weekend One Only.
Saturday at 6:20.

Tito's Tent.

Thoughts:  Kenneth Charles Blume III started out with some instruments, but when he was in high school he came in second place with an entry into a national electronic music competition, and he began to take electronic music production more seriously.  He left Connecticut for New York City, where he collaborated with Smoke DZA on four albums, worked on an ad campaign, and then ended up heading to Boston to study at Berklee.

The fun thing about listening to this catalog is that you get all sorts of different rappers jumping in on these beats.  J.I.D., Denzel Curry, someone named Dominic Fike, something called 347aiden, Larry June, and a bunch more.  Sometimes, that is not great.  Like the Teezo Touchdown track, or the Jany Green track, of the Since99 one, all of which are awful.  That last one is super duper awful.  Makes me really want to stop listening to this guy altogether.  But with June or JID, that is great.

His first album available on Spotify is from 2017, and is with HoodRich Pablo Juan and is called South Dark.  Meh.  The beats are fine, but mainly just clicky little trap things like I hear from the backseat all the time because of the TikTok.  Also back there in history, an album with KEY! from 2018 that is unimpressive, and a single from 2018 with something named Zack Fox and it is very much not good.  Pretty sure he makes fart noises a few times at the start of the track.  In 2019, he does an album with Rico Nasty that still doesn't do much for me, even the track featuring Earthgang, who I like.

But in 2019, his hit popped up on a single with Dominic Fike who has some huge hits.  "Phone Numbers" has 258.5 million streams.

Thoroughly mid.  Beat is fine, but just entirely unmemorable.  Very basic and there is no way you'll recall anything about it in five minutes.  Some clicks and bass and bloops.  I'm guessing this was a big hit on TikTok.

More recently, in 2022, he released an album of mostly instrumental beats called "LOUIE," that is pretty good for like a chill studying vibe type record.  Or maybe for in a clothing store to be innocuous enough to just bop along to as you look through the J Crew outlet mall ties.  Top track is "Last Words," with 14.4 million streams.

Yeah, that's kinda nice.  Vibe and all that.  I guess that is the sort of thing to expect from his live show - being that he is not listed as bringing along any rappers with him, I guess you'll just get to vibe along to some beats for an hour and then wander off to find something else.

For curiosity, I looked up live shows on YouTube, and I found one from a year ago called Boiler Room x Primavera Sound Barcelona x Cupra.  And yeah, it sounded like it was just a DJ set where he plays a bunch of bits and pieces from other people's music, while he pushes buttons and moves sliders around.  So, this is going to be a show built for the kiddies so they can go yell "SHUT THE FUCK UP" with a Baby Keem song for a minute before the track transitions into Missy Elliott.  Probably pretty fun!