In the fall of 2014 I witnessed rap’s rock star future get pushed even further. It was at the Studio at Webster Hall in New York City—the proving ground for up-and-comers whose ticket sales needed to match their online hype— when I saw a then-19-year-old Denzel Curry perform. That night, the Carol City, Florida rapper anxiously attempted to close out his show by convincing the starry-eyed teenage crowd to participate in what he called a “Wall of Death.” After some explanation and cajoling, the crowd split in half and once the beat dropped sprinted into one another mashing themselves together, as an energetic Curry finished out his set. It was a moment that heralded a new era of rap star as rock star. It was apparent that Denzel was tapping into a vibe closer to punk or metal but unlike a collective like Odd Future, whose chaos always seemed playful, Denzel’s was darker than what we were used to seeing at rap shows: “I never wanted to perform like a rapper,” Denzel says over the phone. “Rap shows are boring to me, and I always had fun going to rock shows and moshing and shit.”

Every day we log on to the internet and see another rapper taking credit for pioneering the SoundCloud generation. Usually it’s hyperbole, but in the case of the now 23-year-old Denzel Curry, it’s true. In 2013, the early days of SoundCloud rap, Denzel was still a member of the South Florida-based Raider Klan collective helmed by polarizing rapper/producer SpaceGhostPurrp, as well as an affiliate of the erratic Metro Zu crew (Lofty305, Ruben Slikk, Freebase, and Poshtronaut). The Raider Klan collective would birth underground stars like Xavier Wulf, Chris Travis, and the loosely affiliated Bones. These members, along with Denzel, were some of the first rappers to gain a significant audience on SoundCloud, after transitioning from sites like YouTube and the mixtape hosting platform DatPiff. Denzel would help to establish SoundCloud as a home for rappers and South Florida as the movement’s geographical center. It’s a scene that he has impacted since he dropped his first track on the platform five years ago, and currently coming off of the release of his third studio album, Ta13oo, his influence is still felt.

Denzel is keenly aware of the influence he has had over this generation and details it as he reflects on his trailblazing.

Me, Bones, and Xavier created that little SoundCloud shit. We set the tone for everybody else, and then they just took it a bit further. We definitely brought the audience to SoundCloud. Doesn’t even matter when we was coming up, that’s what it was. We was the main ones using it and that’s how people used to find out about what we dropped. That’s why a lot of people blow up off of SoundCloud now. And I commend them for what they’re doing. But as far as saying, “We created this shit,” they didn’t create shit. Period.

When I started using SoundCloud it was just becoming a thing. My manager put me on, he was like, “We’re gonna put the album [Nostalgic 64] on SoundCloud.” I didn’t know what the fuck it was. The first track we released on there was “Dark and Violent.” Then we just put other stuff on there, and I started seeing the tracks and the views, the comments, everything, climb.

“Threatz” was when I stepped into my own as an individual and one of the first songs we put on SoundCloud. Everything about “Threatz”—the way it was packaged, the artwork, the song’s features, the beat, the verses—that was the takeover. People were gravitating to “Threatz” because of the rawness of the sound. It created the idea that SoundCloud rappers were gritty, and had a lo-fi sound. South Florida been doing that, though, and that’s why it gets the recognition it deserves.

South Florida is SoundCloud. It’s our environment. We got backyard fights, and everyone’s mean as shit, Caribbean. Even if you look into old Caribbean music, that shit’s lo-fi as fuck. And from that we always been doing it on our own. Not having access to the studio, or an engineer to mix it, because all that shit cost money, that’s how you got the sound. We had to be our own engineers and our own mixing masters. We would just go to our homie’s house with a closet, record there, and try to get the best mix possible. We were just winging it, but, really everyone on SoundCloud is.

When I think of SoundCloud, I think of distorted bass and weird ambient-type sounds. Hard-ass beats and a lot of melody. I really have been doing all of that since Raider Klan. Raider Klan was crazy because we all had our own personalities and our own little worlds when it came down to this music. It was the first step to creating your own weird little universe. Everyone was attracted to that.

Thinking back there were a lot of tapes that had a huge impact on people’s lives but none like Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6 [by SpaceGhostPurrp]. The way the track listing was, the ways the beats sounded, the old gritty shit. Just the versatility of the project, the covers and creative direction of it, and hearing people that you never heard before. It had this crazy dark energy about it, some “Mortal Kombat” shit. The way things are spelled, you still see people use Vs and Xs in their names, because that was part of our roots, and we still use it to this day. Even now with rappers like Scarlxrd or X [XXXTentacion], even Travis Scott, you see it. But there were a bunch of tapes from that time that would change people’s lives. Live. Love. ASAP, Nostalgic 64, The Wolf Gang’s Rodolphe, Bones’ tape Garbage, and Lil Ugly Mane’s Mista Thug Isolation. Very classic.

Metro Zu played a big hand in this stuff, too, especially when Mink Rug was coming out. They were ahead of the curve. Everyone is influenced by them: I remember seeing a video of Lil Peep dancing to Ruben Slikk. There’s no way to describe Metro Zu, it’s part of what made them so great. One day they’ll do house, one day they’ll do some dark shit, one day they’ll do some gospel shit, one day they’ll do some trippy shit, they’ll just do anything. And that’s how I ended up cultivating who I was, because I would hang with them every day. So a lot of that versatility rubbed off on me.

I met Metro Zu through my cousin. When I got in Raider Klan, Freebase was the first one to send me a beat. I killed it and sent it back, then Slikk wrote me up right after, like, “Yo, my nigga, let’s make some shit.” I was like, “Fo sho.” Lofty [Lofty305] would always say, “Come to the Zu mansion.” The first time I went to the Zu mansion, Slikk got cursed out by his mom, for smoking on the porch and shit. It was the first time I seen a lot of shit. That floored me. It was the first time I seen someone do cocaine in front of me. I was a teenager, I didn’t do none of that shit. But I was becoming numb to it when I started hanging around these guys. My dad really liked Lofty and Slikk, he was like, “Yeah, I’m taking you to this house ’cause you stay out of trouble here.” Little did he know I was only getting into trouble. Soon Slikk was like, “Here’s what we gonna do: I’m gonna bring my niggas, you bring your Raider Klan niggas, and then we just take this shit on.” That same night, Mink Rug got made. It was also the night Purrp told us he was bipolar, and everybody took it as a joke. But then we found out he actually was bipolar.

All of that Raider Klan and Metro Zu shit was important to SoundCloud. It was the first time we saw a community like that, but people didn’t realize it until later. We was all putting each other on and helping out. That’s what I do now; if I think you’re dope, I’m gonna help you. Even X [XXXTentacion], before he passed, he would always big up me and shit, like, “Yo, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.”

When TA13OO came out, of course, everybody was going to be like, “Yeah, Curry’s a legend, he been doing this.” Once I came out with a certain amount of good projects, they realized the history—behind the whole Raider Klan shit, the SoundCloud shit, me having my hand in people’s careers, and they became bigger than me. Each thing just made me legendary in my own right, and people started to realize my influence.