Twelve years ago, Danny Brown’s breakthrough sophomore album, XXX, wowed hip-hop heads with a split-personality performance showcasing the nightlife antics and daytime stresses of a man on the cusp of 30. He delivered his most reckless lyrics in a diabolical yelp and his personal reflections in a lower, more somber tone, like Biggie in a duet with himself on Ready to Die’s “Gimme the Loot.†The dichotomy left laugh-a-minute party jams for casual listeners and heady verses for sticklers for bars, leading to a uniquely slippery career: Brown holding court with dance-pop darlings like Charli XCX and Purity Ring on his 2013 album, Old; rap heavyweights like Kendrick Lamar, who graced the 2016 heater “Really Doeâ€; and producer-wizard types like Paul White and the Alchemist, who both contribute beats to Quaranta, Brown’s sixth studio album and a bookend to the autobiographical spirit of XXX.
When we spoke on Halloween, he seemed excited to get the record out of the pipeline, framing it as a farewell to pained and diaristic writing. It must be daunting music to make. “Jenn’s Terrific Vacation†is about watching gentrification warp your hometown. “Down With It†teeters over the void, fighting trust and substance-abuse issues to commit in a relationship. Brown moved to Austin from his hometown of Detroit three years ago hoping to prioritize his health. He looks and sounds happier now. This year, he was a riot on the rip-roaring Danny Brown Show with Tom Segura and Christina P. and as co-star of the acclaimed Scaring the Hoes, a team-up with rapper-producer JPEGMAFIA. But the week after Hoes dropped, Brown had checked into rehab. Quaranta appears to document the emotional turmoil that led him to change his life. As he prepares for another tour, he is already conceptualizing another presumably more upbeat work and plotting a deeper push into comedy and figuring out how to obsess over video games without weed.
You tend to take your time with a new release, but we had two this year, between Scaring the Hoes and Quaranta. The last time you doubled up was 2011, the year XXX and Black and Brown! landed. How is it that we’ve gotten this much music from you in 2023?
COVID, shit. We was sitting around so much, so I was making a lot of music, to be honest. The majority of Quaranta was recorded during COVID. I mean, we worked on Scaring the Hoes for two years. Usually I’m touring a lot and working a lot, and it’s harder to sit around and focus on music, but that’s all I had for a minute.
How did it feel being off the road for that long?
It was horrible, because I was going through a lot of different situations. It was like everything happened at once. It was a bad time for me, to be honest.
I don’t want to be all “So, how are you?,†but … how are you?
I’m great now.
I’ve heard you refer to the new album as a “trauma dump.†I was thinking about all the classic rap that technically qualifies. You could say Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me†is a trauma dump. What brought that out on this record?
Really, for me, it’s a therapy type of situation. As men, we feel uncomfortable being emotional in some sense. The best way for me to get it out is through my music. Now, I actually go to real therapy. I don’t really have to use music as an outlet like that anymore. It’s not something I consciously do. Sometimes, the shit come out in songs. And it helps me get through it.
You’re gearing up to go out on the road, playing music you wrote in a much worse headspace. How are you feeling about the tour?
I’m actually excited. We did the Scaring the Hoes tour with me being sober. I was really worried about it until I got into the swing of things. Before, when I was in my drinking and drugging and all that shit, I had this feeling of just wanting to get everything over with. With touring, there’s a lot of downtime. You’re sitting around. I get excited to play shows now. I feel like a lot of my drinking started with being on the road and nervous. Really, I was making shit harder on myself, going about it that way. Now, it’s fun just to be onstage playing music for the people that enjoy it and seeing them have a good time.
After Gucci Mane got sober, I started to wonder what it’s like leaving that wild reputation behind. Is there a certain portion of the audience that’s just always going to want to see you at your most chaotic?
That’s there with everything you do in life. People love a train wreck. But that ain’t productive for my life. I don’t care what people want out of me. I care about myself more than the perception of me. What’s healthier for me is what’s more important to me, so I have to focus on that. I can’t care what other people think. I’ve never been that type of guy anyway.
How is your experience of Austin different from life in Detroit?
I can live a healthier lifestyle here. It’s a lot less stress, just dealing with family and friends and living in sobriety now. My friends still party. I don’t want to be Debbie Downer all the time. When I moved away, it was initially to start to focus on my health. I was dating a girl out here and going back and forth all the time. We were getting more and more serious. Then, I was talking to Tom Segura, who was moving to Austin. It was a no-brainer for me. I was already thinking about it.
We always talked about doing a podcast together, but they did it out of L.A., and I wasn’t really planning on being in L.A. like that. I always told him I really didn’t want to do a podcast, but if I did do one, I’d do it with them, because I liked the way they ran their business. Anybody can set a camera up in their bedroom and talk in front of it. They take it serious, and I take everything I do serious in some sense.
The first episode immediately gave me a headache from laughing. You were talking about a girl whose parrot learned YG lyrics. I feel like you could step right into stand-up if you wanted. Is that something you’re interested in?
Definitely, because I have some of the funniest people in the world telling me I should do it. If I got people like that telling me it’s something I should do, it’s something I want to do. But I’m still too focused on music right now. It’s still kind of hard for me to transition from writing songs to writing jokes. I still really can’t grasp the concept. It’s easy for me to talk random shit and be funny, but to sit down and figure it out has kind of been difficult. It’s a process. In the industry, I’m hanging around more comics than rappers, and they’re giving me confidence. But just like anything else, you’re going to suck at it for a minute. I’ve got to be able to have the heart to suck at it for now. I don’t. I’ve still got a few more albums in me, so I want to focus on music. I’ve been making a lot more music since I’ve been in Texas.
“Jenn’s Terrific Vacation†might be the hardest song I ever heard about gentrification. I respect the inversion of Goodie Mob’s “Cell Therapy.†CeeLo had a verse talking about projects gates trapping residents inside, and now you’re saying the real estate that was once unwanted is very desirable.
When I heard the beat … I say God’s my ghostwriter. I can’t even take credit for that one. It just happened. I didn’t think hard about it. I had just moved to downtown Detroit. This was before everything got shut down with COVID. It was what I was seeing. I was seeing places that used to literally be crack dens — downtown Detroit used to be like a ghost town. Every now and then, something happened and it’d be cracking. For the most part, it was crackheads and prostitutes. Now, it’s dog parks and a lot of rich white people that would usually be living in the suburbs. But the city was looking good. Then COVID happened, and it was a dark place. I now go home once or twice a year or so.
I’ve been thinking a lot about “Detroit vs. Everybody,†which features you and Eminem. Is there a relationship there? I feel like we should have had a long history of collaborations.
I would love that. I only met him one time. It’s kind of hard to work with him, I feel. He’s got his small circle, and that’s all he fucks with. You can’t blame him.
The new album is full of memories of growing up, and references to culture and crime in Detroit. In “Y.B.P.†you talk about feeling “stuck in the middle between Blade and Dilla.â€
I always felt like that. Detroit has always had two sides to it: music where you can go to a fancy restaurant in some village in Europe and it’s playing, and street rap. In the States, street rap has gotten popular in the last five to ten years, but it’s always been popular in Detroit. Even with me … you ain’t gonna hear no cars riding past blasting Danny Brown, but you would hear some Sada Baby. It’s a crazy duality. I feel like I’m more of a street guy than a Dilla guy when it comes to my music. I lived more of the street lifestyle the Sada Babys talk about than the backpack open-mic life, but that’s the scene that made my career start to work. I’m a fan of them both. When I started out rapping in Detroit, it was more from the street side of being around the Chedda Boyz and stuff like that. I was the middle guy. No scene really fucked with me.
Itsthereal’s Blog Era podcast revisits the Wild West moment when the power in mainstream hip-hop music and media shifted dramatically. It was easier to find an audience in those years, but I feel like if the music skewed a little weird, the coalition of support didn’t come together as quickly. What was your experience?
The blog era pretty much made me. It was hard when you had to rely on labels just to be able to post a song somewhere. The first time I ever got posted on a blog, I was in jail. My brother was sending out songs I recorded before I got locked up. This CO that was cool with me was letting me come down on weekends because he was into hip-hop. We would just look up blogs. I was locked up for a year. After a year away from hip-hop, you don’t know what the fuck is going on once you get out. I was able to still tap in and find out what was going on. That’s when Hip Hop Havoc was a thing. We had checked Hip Hop Havoc, and one of my songs was on there. It blew my mind. I was like, “Oh shit!†It made me feel like when I got out of jail, that’s what I was going to do. I was going to hit the blogs hard. “This is who’s fucking with me.â€
Now anybody can log on YouTube and drop a song. We need a little gatekeeping now. Older guys come from the school where it was all about being original. If you wasn’t original, niggas didn’t fuck with you. You was a biter. My generation is all about player hating: “Oh, you just hating.†That made motherfuckers a lot nicer. Now, we’re in a generation of clout chasing, and older guys really don’t want to feel like haters, so they’re going to show love to everything.
After back-to-back trips through XXX and Quaranta, albums sharing your perspective on life around 30 and 40, I’m curious what you’re going to be doing on the 50 and 60 albums. You could have a Redd Foxx, Rudy Ray Moore kind of career if you wanted.
I feel like Quaranta is pretty much the part two to XXX, and it’s the end of the book. I’m moving on to something else now. I feel like I’ve made these kinds of albums for a minute, but I’m at a happier place in life. I want to make music that reflects that now. I didn’t understand the power of that emotional shit. People would hit me up about certain songs, like, “That shit really helped me.†I’d be like, “Damn, I was fucked-up, and that was a sad song.†I just want to make music to make people happy now. I’m on that art imitates life. I’m not saying it ain’t going to be bars, because that’s what’s always going to be there. It irks me when I see an artist that never grows and continuously makes the same song and sticks to that. I almost feel like I’m being scammed. Me and Peggy had this joke while making the Scaring the Hoes album. A lot of these rappers are like Fortnite. We’re the fucking Dark Souls of the shit. You gotta be listening to hip-hop for a long time to fully really understand this shit. You gotta be a professional.
Did you play Elden Ring? What games are you working through?
I’ve been playing a lot of Cyberpunk. I play sport games and JRPGs and shit for the most part. But since I’ve been sober, it’s been kind of hard for me to just sit at my computer and fucking play video games all day. I feel like I’ve got stuff I need to be doing with my life. I used to just sit around and smoke weed all day and play video games. Now, I don’t smoke weed no more, so games kind of don’t hit the same.
You must rescue the joy of gaming from the association with using. So much great stuff is out: Baldur’s Gate 3, Spider-Man 2, Persona reissues.
I just downloaded Persona 3, and I’m excited because I never played it. I got a Steam Deck. Most of the time if I’m playing games, I’m on the road or on the plane and shit like that. I still buy a lot of games, but I don’t play them shits. I’ve played the 2Ks and all that, but for the most part, I really love Cyberpunk. I loved it when everybody was talking shit about it. I played on a PC, so I never really had problems.
I have to ask, what put it on your spirit to mention Cool Ranch Doritos in XXX’s “Monopoly�
I think that was a joke one of my homies said. “That bitch pussy smell like Cool Ranch Doritos.†I died laughing. “I gotta put that in a rap.†That’s all that was. I can’t take credit. I can’t remember what homie said it. That’s the fucked-up part. I can’t give him the props.
Your last solo album, uknowhatimsayin¿, was executive-produced by Q-Tip. What wisdom did you pick up from working with him?
The biggest thing that he taught me was that you’ve got all the time in the world to work on the music, so you might as well give it all the love and care it needs before you put it into the world. Once you put it out, you can’t take it back. I used to be a one-take motherfucker catching lightning in a bottle, just putting it out. I feel like drugs and shit played a part too. I was getting fucked-up in the studio and running through shit. He taught me to have patience with the music and do a lot of post-work. I might go back in and rewrite shit. And you know how he is. He might take ten years for an album. I’m not that patient.