While Denzel Curry was touring for his 2018 album, Ta13oo, his manager, Mark Maturah, expressed interest in pairing Curry in a recording booth with Kenny Beats. Over a few sessions, the two made 2 to 4 songs, but none of the material stood out to Curry or Beats. Curry recalled that "We had a song called 'Spade' that was hard but it wasn’t breaking any boundaries or setting any trends." The two had a feud over one of these beats being used by another artist as it was supposed to be used on Curry's 2019 album, Zuu, causing Curry to hate Kenny for "months". After some time, people reached out to Curry to have him watch Freddie Gibbs' appearance on The Cave, a bi-weekly freestyle series hosted by and uploaded onto YouTube by Beats. Curry had a positive reaction to the episode's freestyle section and called Kenny Beats, prompting their first dialogue since their aforementioned feud. In August 2019, Denzel Curry appeared on an episode of The Cave and was immediately followed up by the pair recording Unlocked.
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