After 5 years of chopping samples and dropping unplanned bars with his closest friends, Kenny Beats ended his hit YouTube series The Cave. The Cave centered on one key phrase, which has become a spiritual mantra of Kenny’s studio: Don’t Over Think Sh**. Throughout 46 episodes of varying length, Kenny inspired rappers such as Freddie Gibbs, Danny Brown, Teezo Touchdown, and more to rap over hastily-made beats with uncleared samples, resulting in a myriad of delightful tracks that will never see life on any streaming service.
In an April 29 community post directly to his YouTube subscribers, Kenny Beats confirmed that he would be bringing The Cave to an end. “I spent 16 hours a day in that room, 7 days a week, telling any one I could reach to come make music,” the statement read. “After a while, we realized everyone who was coming by was going to be a legend, and the Cave started. This show changed my life, your support changed my life.” Let’s look back on a handful of the best freestyles to come out of the illustrious series.
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7. ScHoolboy Q
ScHoolboy Q popped up for the series finale of The Cave and ended the show with a bang. As part of a victory lap from dropping his long-awaited album Blue Lips at the top of March, Q explained right from the start that he hadn’t had much material prepared. 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 uttering his now-iconic refrain of “the show is not supposed to go like this,” as that became something of a motto throughout the series. If there’s one lesson to take away from Kenny’s show, it’s that rappers can be difficult to work with, incapable of following direction and flatly aggressive at times, but if you give them a hot enough beat, they’ll turn it into magic.
6. Isaiah Rashad
Like ScHoolboy Q, fellow TDE signee Isaiah Rashad also joined Kenny Beats on The Cave to promote a new album back in 2021. Rashad appeared on the show just before his album The House Is Burning hit streaming. Isaiah Rashad and Kenny clearly share a lot of camaraderie, and their chemistry shines on their quickly-constructed track.
Rashad was originally slated to appear on The Cave at an earlier date. The original episode never materialized online, for unknown reasons. Kenny Beats jokes about this at the beginning of the episode by labeling the song file “Zay Cave Take 2.” He also stated, “We have Isaiah Rashad in The Cave today, first time ever… Somebody leaked a photo a while ago, that was all Photoshop.”
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5. Thundercat
Unlike most guests on The Cave, Thundercat doesn’t specialize in writing bars. This made his episode extra special, as he joined Kenny in constructing the beat, dropping some slick grooves on his bass before entering the booth. Thundercat exudes purely chaotic energy in the studio, making him one of the most entertaining characters to grace the series. In his February 2020 episode, Thundercat correctly predicts that Coronavirus is about to become a serious problem, expresses concerns over the upcoming presidential election, and downs a staggering 4 Yerba Mates, totaling more than 300 mg of caffeine in less than an hour.
4. Earthgang
Earthgang deserves a spot on this list for Olu’s incredible world map pants alone. Still, their inclusion can truly be credited to the “crazy kung-fu freestyle action” promised by WowGr8 early in the episode. The Atlanta rap duo joined Kenny Beats on The Cave in the first season. They provided a freestyle so well-crafted it could seamlessly have been dropped on streaming if its samples were properly cleared. The pair of Dreamville signees exhibit tremendous chemistry here, making their long-awaited episode one of the most memorable in the show’s 5-year run.
3. Denzel Curry
Denzel Curry’s episode of The Cave was billed as the season 1 finale. It packs the second longest run time of any episode at 16 minutes and 12 seconds in length. Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats dropped a collaborative EP only 6 months after this episode premiered. The project, titled Unlocked, solidified the fact that the pair perfectly fed off of each other’s musical energy.
While Denzel is less outwardly antagonistic to Kenny than his usual guests, he manages to keep the energy incredibly high. Kenny even remarks “Denzel here by himself is like more energy than ten people.” If we’re measuring by pure bars, this might actually be the best freestyle on this list, as Denzel effortlessly traverses multiple beat switches in real-time with memorable lyrics such as “Flames all on my body like I’m Charmander.”
2. Zack Fox
While Denzel Curry may have had the best jaw-dropping bars in The Cave‘s history, nobody made the show synonymous with their name quite like Zack Fox. The Cave is largely responsible for launching Zack Fox’s music career in the first place. Though Fox had dropped a few comedic tracks online before his Cave appearance, he was mostly known for his comedy writing and hilarious social media rants which once got him banned from Twitter (now X.)
While Thundercat may have exhibited some loopy energy on The Cave, Zack Fox appears on the series as the final boss of chaos. Fox raps hilarious bars about freeing Palestine and preemptively offering 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 Cave, there’s a 90 percent chance that this is the episode that got them into the show.
1. Vince Staples
Just two weeks after the explosive Zack Fox episode made The Cave a viral sensation, Vince Staples joined the show and launched the insanity to the stratosphere. Denzel Curry may have offered the best rapping, and Zack Fox may have provided the most comedy, but Vince Staples perfectly smashes these two worlds together with a freestyle that is equal parts off-the-walls and loaded with powerful rhymes.
From the top of the show, Vince Staples pesters Kenny Beats with the voracity of Bugs Bunny, demanding a beat with “808’s no heartbreak, at all” and “Black on everything crime, even animals.” Elsewhere in the episode, Vince throws up gang signs, accuses Kenny of engaging in the slave trade for locking his studio door, and raps the now iconic phrase “Kenny Beats is the police.” Kenny Beats cop memes flooded the internet for years after this landmark episode, causing the producer to jest in multiple episodes that “Vince Staples ruined my life.”
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