Danny Brown
HIP-HOP’S CLOWN PRINCE HAS THE LAST LAUGH
As an outspoken enthusiast of cocaine, ecstasy, weed, adderall, codeine and promethazine (the latter two of which he prefers to mix with cream soda rather than Sprite) and the proud author of the most sexually explicit lyrics ever committed to record, Danny Brown’s name evokes shock and hilarity. But his style reflects the colourful and lawless condition of contemporary hip-hop, and there’s more to this dentally impaired rapper than meets the eye. Ahead of his long awaited new album, Crack caught up with Brown during his ‘Old and Reckless’ tour, named as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that, at the age of 32, he’s enjoying something of a belated career peak.
We enter the venue’s back stage area. There’s a disappointing absence of powder-fuelled debauchery, instead just three guys shrouded in a thick cloud of pungent blunt smoke. Danny’s tour DJ, frequent producer and close friend Skylar ‘Skywlkr’ Tait flicks through tracks from Gucci Mane’s Trap House 3 album on his MacBook, while a hefty older dude sits in total silence. He seems to have some kind of managerial role, but when he later sends a stage invader flying with a forceful shoulder barge, it transpires that he’s a pretty handy bodyguard too.
Brown is slumped on the sofa, wearing a red Adidas hoodie which, once peeled off onstage later, will unleash that notorious hair do – a ruffled afro that looks like it was cut by a drunk, blindfolded barber with a lawn strimmer – and his androgynous, dress- length T-shirt. It’s this weirdo look, along with his skinny leather jeans, that allegedly made 50 Cent – the epitome of yesteryear’s narrow-minded rap hegemony – tear-up Brown’s potential record deal with G-Unit in 2010. But during the seismic shift in mainstream hip-hop culture that occurred soon after, this flamboyance catapulted Danny Brown into relevance after years of struggling in underground purgatory. “Rest in peace wack niggas / with oversized clothes / who complain about my jeans ‘cause I’m taking all they hoes!” he gleefully howled on his triumphant comeback anthem Blunt After Blunt.
Despite going through a troubled youth spent flogging weed and crack rocks on the decaying street corners of Detroit’s East Side, Brown claims he’s always had a defiantly provocative outsider image. “I was always that guy into fashion in my hood. When people saw me in the street and looked at the way I dressed, they’d be like ‘Danny, what is that, you crazy!’” he says, bursting into his manic, contagious laugh. “And you look around a few years later and they’re wearing that shit. I was wearing True Religion jeans in like 2007, the whole of Detroit wears ‘em now!”
And while we’re on the subject of his home city, he’s keen to acknowledge the link between Detroit’s legacy and his love of dancefloor-tailored beats. “My dad was a house DJ, and I just think being from Detroit in general, it (dance music) wasn’t really something you could escape, it was part of our culture. We’d be in the car listening to DJs like The Electrifying Mojo. And even just on 5 o’clock mix shows, the majority of it would be like ghetto tech and shit like that. I wasn’t dancing to top 40 radio when I was a kid, know what I mean?” It’s an influence that’s always been rooted in his sound, from the Model 500 and Disco D samples buried in his early tracks to the industrial, jerky beats of XXX, and the rap-rave crossover potential is more prominent than ever with his upcoming album Old. Brown’s enthusiasm for ‘molly’ consumption – a habit not exactly encouraged by the elder generation of rappers – is starkly realised in the record’s second half, with a hyperactive, day-glo soundscape cooked up with help from Rustie, A-Track and Darq E Freaker.
After threatening to leak the album himself due to frustration with numerous delays, Brown’s label Fool’s Gold eventually settled on the September 30th release date. In the two year gap since XXX, Danny Brown has appeared on a relentless string of one-off collaborations, ensuring that the words ‘featuring Danny Brown’ keep afloat on the turbulent tides of the rap blogosphere. Recently he’s hopped on a track by UK dub mutation project The Bug, a menacing street banger by Chief Keef affiliate SD and – most bizarrely – a yet-to-be heard song by Antipodean sample group The Avalanches, who are about to return with their first album in 12 years. Of all his appearances leading up to Old, maybe the most high profile was 1 Train, the star studded track on ASAP Rocky’s chart climbing debut, where Brown sounded like he’d stumbled into the recording booth after being up partying for three days straight. Yet somehow he wiped the floor with everyone else on the track, including lyrically astute rappers like Action Bronson and Kendrick Lamar.
That wild spontaneity is key to the appeal of Brown’s style, so is it true that he nails most of his verses in one take? “Yeah, cause I say shit wrong a lot, I might fuck up, some of it doesn’t really make sense – but I’m tryn’na capture an emotion, not get every word on point. With me, it’s like I’m trying to take a picture, trying to get that moment, know what I’m saying?”, he explains, clicking his fingers for emphasis. “So I can be hearing this beat for months and months and months, and then one day the line just pop into my head. If I’m working on an album, I’ll just sit at a desk and listen to beats at 10 o’clock every night”, he says, nodding his head rhythmically to an imaginary track, “If something happens, it happens, if it don’t, it don’t. But one night I might get an idea, pop some adderall (prescription drug used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy) and knock out like three or four songs.”
But while it’s the high pitched, saliva spraying screech that Danny Brown’s casual listeners know him for, fans more closely familiar with his full length releases will appreciate the diversity of his style and the depth of his persona. XXX was soaked in Brown’s ultra sleazy brand of hedonism, and established his sense of humour with goofy wisecracks (“You softer than Flanders’ son”, he taunted on Adderall Admiral), but in the second half he detailed brutal poverty in a deep, husky tone. Old has a similar duality; turntable scratches in the opener squash any misconceptions of him being adverse to underground or – whisper it – backpacker rap, as do contributions from Stones Throw producer Oh No and experimental hip-hop beatmaker Paul White, while tracks like Lonely and Clean Up might be some of the most sober he’s ever recorded.
Right now, it feels like Danny Brown is still more famous in the UK for those absurdly funny viral video interviews rather than his actual music. But whether or not the songs on Old can establish Brown as a heavyweight rapper rather than a clown-like character is kind of irrelevant. He doesn’t demand to be taken too seriously, and that notoriety is fundamental to his appeal. The new album also proves he’s in no hurry to suppress his reputation as a womaniser. Anyone who follows Brown on Twitter will have seen their feed get totally clogged up with his retweets of female fans who’re publicly fantastising about him, and he’s been known to lap up these propositions on tour – though he does refrain from calling his admirers ‘groupies’. “A groupie would suck a hype man dick, a groupie suck a driver’s dick just to meet you, know what I’m saying? I don’t feel I have that. I get nice girls, who just want to have fun”.
So why do these girls find him so irresistible? Maybe it has something to do with his sheer confidence, the unapologetic way he brags about his lust. “Yeah, sometimes, a girl wanna hear you say ‘I just wanna fuck’, because maybe that’s all she wanted too. But then you run around being sneaky and beat around the bush and she can sense this is fake, to the point that she feels she’s being conned into doing something. We’re all human beings. Sometimes you just gotta be upfront, sometimes you just gotta be honest about what you want.”
“And girls trust me for some reason, maybe because I listen”, he ponders, clearly warming to the subject. “I’m older now too, some girls like a man with age – but I look young … well, I guess I still do!”, he says, cracking out that toothless grin and bursting into another fit of hysterical laughter.
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Old is released September 30th via Fools Gold
Words: David Reed
Photos: Paul Whitfield
TRASH TALK’S LEE SPIELMAN ON HITTING THE ROAD WITH DANNY BROWN //
“Danny’s always been cool to us. We’ve hung out all over the world getting into a bunch of trouble. I think both of us go out and give it our all regardless of the circumstances. It doesn’t matter if you came to see punk or rap, our shows together are gonna get crazy. I don’t expect this run to be any different from the usual mischief. Hopefully I make it out alive.”
100% SILK/NOT NOT FUN ARTIST MARIA MINERVA ON THE GENDER POLITICS OF BROWN’S LYRICS //
“The women in Danny’s lyrics are either hoodrats or “bad bitches”. I honestly don’t want to think that he lives what he raps. It’s more like his Freudian superego saying these things, or saying what he thinks his audiences want to hear. Tracks like Express Yourself are in theory meant to be empowering but end up misogynistic. I Will stands out – an anthem for pleasing a woman orally, going against conventional sexual cliches of black masculinity, but also destroying any doubts about him being gay.”
GRIME PRODUCER AND COLLABORATOR DARQ E FREAKER ON BROWN’S CHARISMA //
“He’s got an addictive personality, whether it be music, becky or narcotics. But it’s his addiction to music which is clearly at the forefront of his existence. Danny Brown is a very wise yet eccentric dude, and he’s brave enough to venture into valleys of creativity other rappers won’t. I mean, he’s brought the ideologies of being a rock star to hip-hop. This is what makes him unique.”
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