Wiz Khalifa & Curren$y
Album: 2009
Label: Jet Life Recordings and Atlantic Records
Release Date: February 8, 2019
Gettin’ Back
Written by Silas Valentino
It’s been a long ten years since the last time Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y collaborated. Barrack Obama is long gone from his days as Commander in Chief, Facebook is a 24/7 advertising channel and one of this year’s biggest hip-hop singles is equal amounts country as it is trap rap.
Same goes for the careers of Pittsburg’s Wiz Khalifa and New Orleans’s Curren$y; the former went onto the stadium-level pop success with one of the biggest songs of 2015: “See You Again.” And Curren$y continues to be your hip-hop head friend’s favorite rapper with a consistent string of underground releases across the last decade.
When it was released in the summer of 2009, How Fly was a successful independent mixtape that elevated the careers of both MCs. Hoping to capture some of that fairy dust again, the duo returns with 2009. It’s a 41-minute hazy album that doesn’t stray far from conventional rap tropes and features both rappers casually passing the mic to and fro with the sort of ease that comes with experience or two-and-a-half burnt blunts. This is an album for every fan of How Fly who dared to dream of a reunion between these two. The wait is over.
The first three tracks are produced by Harlem producer Dame Grease who provides a gripping rush of big beats to help settle us back into Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y’s shared world. Opener “Garage Talks” features an almost RUN-DMC big bass beat held together by a brass horn hook. Wiz Khalifa wastes no time updating us where he’s been since ’09 with his opening bars: “I just got the fuck off a plane 6 car garage/I got more than one job/Be a boss, go hard.” Whereas Curren$y feels a little more sentimental about his reunion with an old comrade: “2009, all kind of high/How Fly had fools on the moon trying to drive/It’s a stoned duo, solid gold judo.”
“10 Piece” follows next and is about as complicated as Curren$y’s flow: “I don’t watch soccer, but I like the jerseys/They look good with my jewelry on.” This isn’t Kendrick or DOOM, we’re not putting on 2009 for novel wordplay or new perspectives. This is a party where everyone is welcome to forget the woes and relax by wherever the stereo goes. Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y already made a name for themselves as individuals so this isn’t an album to reinforce their talent. It’s a simple gift for the thousands of fans who downloaded the thing off DatPiff and blasted it from their Corolla speakers.
The album cover art includes a nod to the Grant Theft Auto series and “From the Start” seeks to capture some of that juicy nostalgia. With a beat that could have been on MTV circa 1994 and lines from Curren$y like “I put the cheat code in/I got the money and the infinite lives, this Vice City bitch,” suggests that the game is just a game for these two and the hustle isn’t important anymore.
They’ll record a few songs together, hash out a one-dimensional idea behind a track and, since they’re household names, release it and people just might hear it. It’s already been a month since 2009 was released but it’s already lost in time. What were you doing in August ‘09?