Kenny Beats Ends “The Cave”: 7 Best Freestyles

After five years of chopping samples and dropping unplanned bars with his best friends, Kenny Beats ended his popular YouTube series The cave. The cave focused on one key phrase, which has become a spiritual mantra of Kenny’s studio: Don’t Over Think Sh**. Over 46 episodes of varying length, Kenny inspired rappers like Freddie Gibbs, Danny Brown, Teezo Touchdown and more to rap over hastily made beats with unrounded samples, resulting in a host of delightful songs that will never appear on a streaming service. .

In an April 29 community post directly to his YouTube subscribers, Kenny Beats confirmed he was coming The cave to an end. “I spent 16 hours a day in that room, 7 days a week, telling everyone I could reach to come make music,” the statement said. “After a while we realized that everyone who came along would become a legend the cave started. This show changed my life, your support changed my life.” Let’s look back at a handful of the best freestyles to come out of the illustrious series.

Read more: Top 10 most popular freestyles of 2021

ScHoolboy Q showed up for the series finale of The cave and ended the show with a bang. As part of a victory lap after releasing his highly anticipated album Blue lips In early March, Q explained from the beginning that he had not prepared much material. Ultimately, he managed to rap the “verse of the year,” even though Kenny hadn’t finished chopping the beat.

It’s more than fitting that the final episode of The cave saw Kenny Beats utter his now iconic refrain, “the show isn’t supposed to go this way,” as that became something of a motto throughout the series. If there’s one lesson to be learned from Kenny’s show, it’s that rappers can be difficult to work with, unable to follow direction, and sometimes downright aggressive, but if you give them a powerful enough beat, they will they make magic out of it.

6. Isaiah Rashad

Like ScHoolboy Q, fellow TDE signee Isaiah Rashad also joined Kenny Beats The cave to promote a new album in 2021. Rashad appeared on the show right before his album The house is burning press streaming. Isaiah Rashad and Kenny clearly share a lot of camaraderie, and their chemistry shines on their quickly constructed song.

Rashad was originally scheduled to appear The cave at an earlier date. The original episode never appeared online for unknown reasons. Kenny Beats jokes about this at the beginning of the episode by calling the song file “Zay Cave Take 2.” He also said, “We have Isaiah Rashad in The Cave today, for the first time ever… Someone leaked a photo a while ago, that was all Photoshop.”

Read more: 6lack Delivers Sparkling Bars on Kenny Beats’ “The Cave”

5. Thundercat

Unlike most guests on The cave, Thundercat does not specialize in writing bars. This made his episode extra special, as he constructed the beat with Kenny and dropped some smooth grooves on his bass before entering the booth. Thundercat radiates pure chaotic energy in the studio, making him one of the most entertaining characters in the series. In his February 2020 episode, Thundercat correctly predicts that the coronavirus is about to become a serious problem, expresses concerns about the upcoming presidential election, and downs a whopping four Yerba Mates, which equates to more than 300 mg of caffeine in less then an hour.

4. Earth Gang

Earthgang deserves a spot on this list based on Olu’s incredible world map pants alone. Still, their inclusion can really be attributed to the “crazy kung fu freestyle action” that WowGr8 promised early in the episode. The rap duo from Atlanta joined Kenny Beats The cave in the first season. They provided a freestyle so well crafted that it could have been seamlessly dropped onto streaming if the samples had been properly cleared. The pair of Dreamville signees display great chemistry here, making their highly anticipated episode one of the most memorable in the show’s five-year run.

Denzel Curry’s episode of The cave was announced as the season 1 finale. It has the second longest running time of any episode, at 16 minutes and 12 seconds. Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats released a joint EP just six months after this episode premiered. The project, titled Unlockedreinforced the fact that the pair fed off each other’s musical energy perfectly.

Although Denzel is less outwardly hostile to Kenny than his usual guests, he manages to keep the energy incredibly high. Kenny even notes, “Denzel here alone has more energy than ten people.” If we measure by sheer measures, this might be the best freestyle on this list, as Denzel effortlessly traverses multiple beat changes in real time with memorable lyrics like “Flames on my body like I’m Charmander.”

2. Zack Fox

While Denzel Curry may have had the best jaw-dropping bars The cave‘s history, no one has made the show more synonymous with their name than Zack Fox. The cave is largely responsible for launching Zack Fox’s music career. Although Fox had already put a few comedy songs online before his Cave appearance, he was best known for his comedy writing and hilarious social media rants that once got him banned from Twitter (now X.)

Although Thundercat may have shown some crazy energy The cave, Zack Fox appears in the series as the final boss of chaos. Fox raps in hilarious bars about the liberation of Palestine and preemptively expresses condolences for the impending death of Betty White. His freestyle was later developed into a “real” song titled “Jesus Is the One (I Got Depression)” that went mega-viral. When people think back to Kenny Beats’ series The cavethere’s a 90 percent chance that this is the episode that got them on the show.

1. Vince Staples

Just two weeks after the explosive episode of Zack Fox The cave a viral sensation, Vince Staples joined the show and launched the madness into the stratosphere. Denzel Curry may have offered the best raps, and Zack Fox may have delivered the most comedy, but Vince Staples brings these two worlds together perfectly with a freestyle that’s equal parts off-the-walls and packed with powerful rhymes.

From the start of the show, Vince Staples harasses Kenny Beats about Bugs Bunny’s gluttony, demanding a beat with “808 ain’t no heartbreak at all” and “Black on all things crime, even animals.” Elsewhere in the episode, Vince throws up gang signs, accuses Kenny of participating in the slave trade for locking the door to his studio, and raps the now iconic phrase “Kenny Beats is the police.” Kenny Beats cop memes flooded the internet for years after this historic episode, prompting the producer to joke in multiple episodes that “Vince Staples ruined my life.”