Six years after Denzel Curry and producer Kenny Beats made UNLOCKED, the two reunited for a second collaborative project under changed circumstances. By 2026, Kenny Beats was working under his given name, Kenneth Blume, while both artists had moved further into established, veteran roles within their respective corners of music. Their reunion became ii, a compact nine-track record that deliberately returned their partnership to a stripped-down way of working. The first UNLOCKED had emerged from an unusually concentrated three-day session in 2020. For ii, Curry and Blume again emphasized immediacy, but the circumstances were not necessarily easy. Blume described their collaboration as something that has always involved disagreement: the two often begin from opposing positions and have to work toward a common point. Accounts surrounding ii's release described substantial creative friction during the sessions, with arguments becoming intense before the pair returned their attention to the music. Blume later characterized what he heard in the finished record as a combination of their growth and that struggle. That tension was paired with an intentional reduction in technology. Rather than treating the follow-up as an opportunity for a larger or more polished studio production, Curry and Blume worked around a deliberately basic setup centered on an SP-404 sampler and a cheap microphone. The limitation fit the directness that had made their earlier collaboration distinctive: Blume constructed compact, sample-driven beats while Curry was given space to attack them with tightly packed verses. The resulting sound draws heavily on abstract and traditional boom-bap language, with chopped samples, blunt drums and abrupt shifts supporting Curry's increasingly precise delivery. The six-year gap also gave the project a different perspective from UNLOCKED. Curry had continued expanding beyond the South Florida and SoundCloud-rap identity associated with his early career, while Blume had broadened his production work across rap, rock and experimental music. Promotional material for ii emphasized that the album was shaped by those accumulated years of experience and presented some of Curry's more personal writing, even while retaining the aggressive energy expected from the partnership. The album remains deliberately short, but its three guests widen its palette. JPEGMAFIA appears on “EVIL GRIN,” Westside Gunn joins Curry on “CROWN,” and Yebba provides vocals on the closing “DIFFERENCE.” The latter was released as the first preview of ii on August 12, 2026, shortly before the album arrived. Its combination of Curry's rapping, Blume's layered production and Yebba's melodic contribution offered a more soulful variation on the record's otherwise rugged framework. A video for opening track “GONE FISHING” accompanied the album's release, reinforcing the sense that ii was conceived as a concise, unified second chapter rather than an expanded sequel packed with extra material. Released digitally on August 21, 2026 through PH Recordings under exclusive license to Loma Vista Recordings, ii ultimately documents the particular chemistry between Curry and Blume: friendship outside the studio, friction inside it, and enough mutual trust to keep challenging each other's decisions. Instead of recreating UNLOCKED exactly, they returned to its basic principle—rapper, producer and minimal equipment—and tested what that approach sounded like after six more years of artistic development.