Contrary to popular belief, Adele doesn’t have a monopoly on naming albums after ages. When the singer-songwriter announced 30, her first full-length in six years, last month, it recalled a different album to some listeners: Danny Brown’s XXX, also recorded when he was 30. The Detroit rapper’s album, which celebrated its tenth anniversary earlier in 2021, chronicled his own anxieties over hitting a new decade of life while still building a rap career, amid songs about drinking, fucking, and partying. As it so happens, Adele’s 30, her best album to date, also covers sex and alcohol, along with the existentialism that so often comes with aging out of young adulthood. Of course, Vulture had to find out what Danny Brown thought of it.
Along with celebrating a decade of XXX, Brown has been preparing for his eighth annual Bruiser Thanksgiving concert, a showcase curated by the rapper that takes place in Detroit on November 24 and benefits local children’s-literacy nonprofit InsideOut. He’s also said he’s working on XXXX (pronounced “quaranta,†in Italian), the sequel album to XXX, and even debuted a few new bars at Pitchfork Festival earlier this year. Between that, Brown took the time to light up a joint, listen to part of Adele’s 30 for the first time, and reflect on its similarities to XXX and his own 30s.
What’s your familiarity with Adele? Where are you at with her?
I heard a few songs, the real popular ones. But I can’t say I’ve listened to an entire Adele album myself.
Okay. So I wanna start with “Easy on Me,†which was the first single. Have you heard this song before?
No. It has 283 million plays!
[“Easy on Me†plays.]
First impressions?
It’s a beautiful song. It was pretty, real traditional. It feels like the real, old-school method of songwriting right there. Just, like, a piano loop and her speaking to the world. There’s not too much going on. So you really got to pay a lot of attention to the lyrics. It’s real minimal. I like that. It sounds like something I hear checking into a hotel, you know what I’m saying?
So she wrote this album mostly when she was 30, and she went through a divorce around then, too.
The song felt like it was a heartbreak. A very emotional moment. It didn’t sound like a wedding song to me.
Yeah, it’s some of the same Adele heartbreak stuff. I want to play a bit of — so, this song, she has a 9-year-old son, and she has dedicated it to him.
Wow, I didn’t know that.
Yeah, and she said it’s her trying to explain the divorce to him.
[“My Little Love†plays.]
So she put these clips of her talking to her son in there, and she said that was partly inspired by listening to Tyler, the Creator, and listening to Skepta.
Oh, dope, dope. That’s fire. I was getting a little Kendrick Lamar vibes. I really liked that. I really liked that beat. But I really liked the way it was recorded, how filtered the beat sounded, and the way the vocals — it had the hollow room turned all the way up on that motherfucker, like, that shit was fire. I really liked that song.
I ain’t know she made shit like that! That was a shock. I ain’t expect to hear nothing like that.
No, this is the first time she’s done some of the stuff like this. It’s mostly been her, piano, or guitar.
Yeah. That’s fire right there.
Let’s listen to this song. This one will surprise you.
[“Oh My God†plays.]
So I feel like that’s the most pop thing she’s ever done.
Yeah. The breakdown, it went a little college-football crazy. [Laughs.] But then in the beginning, it was giving me some En Vogue vibes or something. That was cool, but that’s not my taste.
So one of the things about this song and the next song that I’m going to play you is people are saying this is some of the horniest Adele music.
Horniest. Oh, wow. I mean, that’s your 30s. Your 30s do it to you, man. I can see. It happens to you [if] you go through a breakup in your 30s.
That’s what made me think of XXX, because I was talking to our music critic, and he said it’s one of the horniest albums ever to him.
Oh, shit. Happy to be in that class.
So this one’s called “Can I Get It.†The title kind of says what she’s talking about there.
Oh, wow.
[“Can I Get It†plays.]
That’s crazy. Was this produced by the same person, or it was a lot of different producers?
It’s a few different ones. We can talk about that more in a second, ’cause there’s a few songs she worked with a hip-hop producer on.
That’s crazy. That one’s like, song-sequence-wise — that was just crazy. I don’t even understand. I can’t wrap my head around how you make songs like that. Hip-hop is so straightforward. Like, verse, hook, verse, hook, maybe have a cool breakdown part. But the way it is just so, I don’t know, unexpected. I never know where it’s going to go next. It is just all over the place to me.
Well, the other thing too is a lot of these songs are over six minutes long.
I know, it was crazy.
The one after this, she said in an interview that it was originally 15 minutes and she had to cut it down to six.
Wow. I don’t know if I can do something — I mean, nowadays, songs are getting shorter and shorter. Everybody has this ADHD mentality now. Man, I don’t know if I could sit there and listen to a 15-minute song right now.
You were talking about breakups in your 30s, and this song was that moment like, okay, she did the divorce, and now she’s stepping out again. Like, Can I still date? Can I get it?
It’s pretty horny. This is pretty horny.
So this next one, I felt like there was also a bit of a thematic similarity to XXX. It’s called “I Drink Wine.â€
I like wine, it’s cool.
You do?
Yeah. I could see her, a nice night, with a bottle of wine. She be tipsy.
[“I Drink Wine†plays.]
I really liked that one. That’s her more traditional style of stuff, right? And that was just, like, she was just barring up on that one. She was busting bars on that one. And then it went to some London-pub, soccer-game chant on the hook. So I could see that really turning it up. I like that. That’s probably my favorite one I heard so far.
Really?
Yeah! That’s sweet. I like that.
There’s a lot of drinking and drugs on XXX, but for her, this song sounds like it’s more like a sad, anxious —
Yeah. I get that, she’s tipsy now and just pouring her feelings out. You know how they say a drunk person speaks a sober truth?
Do you feel like XXX was that?
I was already fucked up, you know what I’m saying? [Laughing.] She getting fucked up. So that’s a different side of the spectrum. I’m trying to get right, she’s falling down the hole now.
I want to play just a second of this. It’s an interlude and it has Erroll Garner, who was a jazz pianist, on it.
Oh, dope.
[“All Night Parking†plays.]
So it’s got kind of a beat to it.
I don’t know. I like the piano thing, but that’s probably my least favorite out of all of them. I got R. Kelly vibes from it or something, man. So I don’t know.
A few people are saying it sounds kind of trappy, almost.
Yeah, of course. That’s because of those drums. That’s what I didn’t like. That was an unexpected turn, but it was a turn for the worse for me.
The next one is one of the ones that I was saying she worked with a hip-hop producer on. It’s this guy Inflo.
Oh, shit, I hope he ain’t the one that just did them drums [Editor’s note: He was not.].
He works a lot with Little Simz, if you know her.
Yeah, I love Little Simz.
He did her whole last album.
Dope. Yeah, I love his shit.
[“Hold On†plays.]
In the end, it gets big and there’s a choir.
[End of “Hold On†plays.]
That sounds like a hard song, like it took a long time to do. It probably took months to make. You got to respect that. You could just tell it’s probably recorded in many different places, had to do this there and this there. And it seems so minimal in the beginning, but I bet you that was a lot of work on that song right there.
The choir is actually a bunch of her friends.
Oh, dope.
And to me, this feels like one of those being-uncertain-about-her-30s type of songs.
Shit! [Laughs.]
What?
Just like, it’s Adele! She’s legendary. You think, people like Adele, like, What? Ain’t got no problems. You’re good. Just shows everybody got problems. No matter who you are, [you’re] still a human being.
Ten years on, listening to XXX, the same could be said about yourself.
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Totally understand.
Do you remember feeling uncertain at that moment, or confused?
Hell yeah. Definitely uncertain. Still, shit! I feel uncertain to this day. Nobody really could be fully confident. Especially with putting out music — I think everybody gets this nervous feeling of something when they putting music out. I think if you don’t, you don’t care then, at that point. I care too much about my music. So yeah, sleepless nights. Definitely.
Let’s do one more. Let’s listen to a bit of the last one. Inflo did this one, too.
[“Love Is a Game†plays.]
That was dope. That was like some Motown shit or something. I like that, that was cool. [Inflo] showed he got so much range. That’s amazing.
It feels like this sort of song where she’s recounting all this shit she has been through over the past few years.
Definitely could relate to that. I mean, Adele’s an amazing songwriter. At the end of the day, that’s what you take away from her albums. Ain’t about the glamor and the glitz, or the Auto-Tune, or nothing like that. Her stuff is just straight-to-the-point traditional songwriting. And she makes amazing music. Shout-out to Adele.
As someone who’s now been through his 30s, do you have any advice for her? She’s 33 now.
I can’t tell her shit. I need some advice from her, if anything!
What advice do you need?
I don’t know. I really don’t [laughs], to be honest.
I mean, I could see that she’s still, at the end of the day, maturing with her songwriting, and the way she go about making her music. So you got to love that. No matter how long a person been doing it, they still have the desire to get better and try new stuff. You got to respect it.
A quote came out recently where Adele was talking about wanting to sing on a rap record. Would you want to hear that?
Hell yeah! Shit, why not? I mean, shit, tell her holler at me! [Laughs.]
Something for XXXX.
I would love that. That’d be amazing.
Do you feel like you’re kind of in that same space as Adele of still maturing, both as an artist and as a person?
Yeah, definitely. I feel like if I’m not learning, then I’m not really trying to get better. It’s just a constant drive to learn more about music, songwriting, and production in general. To make my music that much better.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.