Strictly 4 The Scythe exuberantly explores Southern hip-hop

He's been moving seamlessly between the tightrope walk in maintaining underground credibility and the leer of festival-scale visibility, all the while pushing at the boundaries of formal experimentation (see: Melt My Eyez See Your Future) with one eye fixed on his forebears. Strictly 4 The Scythe, the debut project from his new collective alongside TiaCorine, FERG, Bktherula and Key Nyata, explicitly draws on the traditions of Memphis, Houston and Miami while extending the lineage of King of the Mischievous South. On their first foray, The Scythe keep those Southern hip-hop textures in raw circulation, to hedonistically clumsy yet undeniable results.

Across an ephemeral eight tracks, Strictly 4 The Scythe can feel easy to dismiss in its mic-jostling, though to do so would be to miss the wider angle. On opener “THE SCYTHE”, Curry and company are in full Three 6 Mafia revivalist mode, while on “PHONY” the inclusion of Juicy J – yes, in 2026 –

over those queasy, Mike Oldfield-indebted, organ-streaked keys gives the track a real Memphis menace. “LIT EFFECT” enmeshes the post-SoundCloud, digitally fried energy of Bktherula’s Atlanta into Curry’s broader Southern framework, as low-end guitars harden beneath his second verse and the track seems to tear westward, like some smoke-choked bolt up the I-22 into Tennessee.

Curry’s curation is oddly unembarrassed in its glut, the project playing like a series of amuse-bouches from across the Southern hip-hop continuum. “YOU AIN’T GOTTA LIE” taps a specifically Floridian strain of pop-rap gaudiness, a kind of J.R. Rotem sheen one might have assumed was interred in a Miami club circa 2013. It is absurd, certainly, but not remotely out of pocket on this whistle-stop tour, where leaning in is evidently part of the project’s pleasure.

“HOOPTY” proves the standout on this referential Catherine wheel. Landing somewhere between chipmunk soul and snap music, replete with dropkicked beat switch, it best captures the overfull logic of The Scythe while also being the most uncomplicated fun to be had on the record. TiaCorine, already central to the group’s bratty chemistry, and Smino ride the whole thing with enough conviction to justify the overindulgence.

As a project, Strictly 4 The Scythe is overcommitted and faintly ridiculous. Its collective chemistry is intermittent, owing something to its indiscriminately-into-the-crowd exuberance and occasionally tipping into something cynically curatorial. Everything here reaches toward some prior moment, some place, some local sound, some artist-specific cadence; though one senses that this promiscuous referentiality is the very point of Curry and co.’s intent. But individual songs can lose out as a result, becoming carriers of idea before ossifying as compositions in their own right.

These failures are failures of abundance, though. Curry remains an earnest underground champion, committed to putting the sounds of the wider South forward while making sure the audience has fun in the process. Messy? Sure, but full of genuinely good ideas.