Send "Danny Brown " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Danny Brown is a Detroit rapper with a strangled yap of a voice that you could politely call "distinctive." Depending on the moment, he either resembles a Doberman whose paw has been stepped on or a cross between Jello Biafra and South Park's Terrence & Philip. For a rapper, choosing an abrasive honk like this as your instrument is an audacious move; it all but demands that you come well-equipped with compelling reasons for your listeners to hang on.But Danny Brown is an unusually audacious rapper. He proudly rocks skinny jeans that, to hear him tell it, cost him a G-Unit label deal all by themselves, and he has lately settled on the kind of wildly asymmetrical haircut that can invite savage beatings in certain areas. He belongs, in other words, to a proud lineage of mangy underground-rap weirdos. There are many rappers vying to claim this spot, but none of them is as talented or as three-dimensional as Brown, and his latest mixtape, XXX, finds him transforming his quirks and jagged edges into a compelling and immersive universe. That universe is haunted by drugs, both sold and consumed. XXX's grubby production, laced with trashy electro, evokes a heart-pounding clamminess that will feel instantly familiar to anyone who's weathered a spiky high on cheap stimulants. Brown's voice is uniquely suited to conveying wild-eyed, loose-cannon insanity, and the rising note of panic in it makes every mention of snorting crushed Adderall hurt. To hear him tell it, he is a Hoover for illegal substances; on "Die Like a Rock Star", he catalogs the various undignified ends he expects to meet, invoking Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix, and others and leering, "Experimented so much it's a miracle I'm livin'." His penchant for depravity might remind listeners, at least initially, of Odd Future. But Brown's depravity, unlike OF's, comes burdened with real-life stakes; at age 30 (the mixtape's title indicates Brown's age besides suggesting sex and drugs), Brown has lived through some genuinely awful-sounding shit. On "Scrap or Die", he flips the chorus of Jeezy's "Trap or Die" so that it becomes about stripping houses for scrap metal to sell to factories. He takes a perverse joy in grabbing your neck and shoving your face in some vividly unpleasant places: "I done served fiends on they menstrual/ Ain't even had pads, stuff they panties with tissue!" he yelps on "Monopoly". His shock rhymes on XXX are like horrorcore stripped of cartoon fantasy, and they carry the moral weight of experience. On "Pac Blood", he calls his lyrics "shit so personal my mom can't listen to," and you believe him....full text |
| Hiphopdx |
| By the time age 30 comes around, many people have deferred their dream careers, love interests, and lifestyle choices for what three decades have shown them. Fortunately, Danny Brown spent his '20s marching to his now tune. When Roc-A-Fella A&Rs urged him to adopt a southern image and sound, he used soulful and/or gritty Detroit sounds to gain fans with his acclaimed Hot Soup and The Hybrid. When G-Unit boss 50 Cent refused to sign him because he wore skinny jeans, he adopted a weird, Japanese-inspired haircut and signed with Fool’s Gold, the powerhouse indie label run by DJ A-Trak and Nick Catchdubs. So though his latest project XXX may seem like a departure from his usual sound, it’s what Danny has done all along. Listeners get that entire experience, for better or for worse. On his previous albums, Danny Brown saw firsthand how the drugs he sold affected his customers. On XXX, he rhymes from the other side of the handoff, with new career pressures and experimental nature as the catalyst. “I used to turn these drugs, now these drugs turn my life,” he admits over Frank Dukes’ spacey, horn-driven title track. When he’s not enjoying the escapism on “Blunt After Blunt” or “Aderall Admiral,” he uses “DNA” to reflect on how his family’s drug dependences affected his own. The addictions aren’t limited to substances, either: elsewhere, he confides in sex (“I Will”) or a fast lifestyle (“Die Like A Rockstar”). The changes in Danny’s world are also personified in his production choices—he diverts from his previous mix of soul and knock for an experimental palette of electronic minimalism. Just in case listeners get too infatuated with his own admissions, Danny’s sure to point out that he’s not the only one with issues: “Nosebleeds” and “Party All The Time” candidly narrate the woes of women who use cocaine and nightlife to deal with their problems. Danny’s candid laments of “laughing at the world ‘cause her life is a joke” in the latter seem more than observant from an outside perspective. Thankfully, there’s still enough of the familiar Danny Brown for original fans to enjoy if the new him becomes too much. Songs like “Bruiser Brigade” and “Detroit 187” remind listeners of Danny’s hardnosed, street origins, while “Pac Blood” sees Danny dismantling a gritty Brandun Deshay soundbed with hilarious, punchline-heavy bars like, “rhymes that would make the Pope want to get his dick sucked, have Virgin Mary doing lines in the pickup/make Sarah Palin deep throat till she hiccup, have T.D Jakes in this bitch doing stick-ups.” He also continues to find the smiles and cries with poverty in Detroit: “Lie4” comically celebrates the temporary pleasure of income tax refunds, while “Scrap or Die” recounts scouring through junk yards and abandoned buildings to scrap metal to survive. Also, the satirical “Radio Song” conveys the message of mainstream rap’s formulaic nature too well, as its simplistic beat and singsongy chorus are tough to look past....full text |
| Earmilk |
| The first time I decided to stop sleeping on Danny Brown was in a room that Danny Brown, or at least the Danny Brown we hear in XXX, would probably enjoy very much. We used to call it the “U” because most of the room was taken up by three found-on-the-street couches arranged loosely into a ‘U’ shape. It was the poor man’s sectional. Old PS2 games, powders and empty bags from pizza slices (which might as well be a Danny Brown cover… most of his videos seem to be shot in his dirty kitchen) covered the one coffee table. It was a fun time! And, it was in that room that I saw Danny Brown’s video for “Cyclops” for the first time, which is basically a $30 horror movie about white hipsters getting killed in Detroit. It’s awesome....full text |
Danny Brown lyrics Music videoclips
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