uknowhatimsayin¿ – Danny Brown
This piece started as a reflection on Danny Brown’s entire discography in the hope of flogging my spare ticket to some lucky soul (Camden, March 19th if anyone’s interested). His most recent offering ‘Stardust’ is a departure from his previous sound, but given the man is a sonic fidget arse, any mention of a departure is redundant. I thought I’d revisit his older music partly to relight the fire and partly to make sense of ‘Stardust’s’ hyperpop whiplash. But as often happens when you embark on a journey, I fell in love. Or should I say reconnected with an old flame. ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ was MY Danny Brown album. Being the only thing he dropped from 2016 to 2023 I wasn’t spoilt for choice, and perhaps necessity became love, like Tom Hanks and Wilson. Unfortunately, we lost touch in the trolley dash of my listening habits.
I remember the exact moment when music first excited me. The year was 2013 and a little-known rapper called Eminem released ‘Rap God’, a song that made me realise there’s music beyond school run Kiss FM listening. I spent 2-3 years as a Stan, during which Eminem dropped ‘Shady XV’. There was a posse cut called ‘Detroit Vs Everybody’, the typical post- ‘Recovery’, over-epic, remember-I-made-Lose-Yourself Eminem song. It had ‘hard-ass’ verses from Royce Da 5’9” and Big Sean which went down like water off a duck’s bollocks back in my more ignorant days. But what you’re really waiting for was that cathartic Eminem verse where the piano comes in (cue emotional heft) and he kills everyone on the track (death by verbal diarrhoea). But instead, someone called Danny Brown jumps on the third verse with a voice that just hits you like an epiphany. I felt like I was dodging uvulas and tonsils. And he may as well have spoken in brail. Never mind the music video. Danny’s there looking like a cartoon mad scientist post-explosion. He’s got this Jedward quiff and a smile like ‘Jailhouse Rock’, but Danny explains it best – ‘came in this bitch tongue out without a front tooth’. One summative word flashed through my mind. Dogshit. But this was the dismissive thought of a thirteen-year-old who had no appreciation for sense of self. My idea of good music was hip-hop, and my idea of good hip-hop was the lyrical miracles. If you didn’t rap fast and swear like a sailor, you went straight on the landfill. But this was one pair of oversized Evisus in a deadstock warehouse of stereotypes and posturing. I have a lot of respect for Danny’s style nowadays. Danny blew a record deal with 50 Cent because he refused to stop wearing skinny jeans. The guy is unapologetically himself. Whether you like that or not is a matter of taste, but it’s difficult not to respect the integrity. However, for the record, I still don’t know what half the lyrics are on this album. He does it for listener retention I’m convinced.
Danny’s willingness to experiment with musical styles and indie artists is like a picnic – it attracts wasps. Snob wasps. And because of its placement in the chronology of his discography, ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ is seen like that one Gibb that didn’t make the BeeGees. “The sound is more commercial” is the usual gripe. Yeah, more commercial for Danny Brown, the same geezer who would rap over a looped queef. The beats are more typical of a hip-hop album, but they are by no means commercial. The dreamy ‘Theme Song’ billows smoke, cut by one haunting stringline and backed by A$AP Ferg adlibs for added hutzpah. ‘3 Tearz’ is a collage of noises strung together by a fly’s buzz. I like to imagine JPEGMafia made this beat like John Travolta collecting sounds in ‘Blowout’. ‘Belly of the Beast’ sounds like Dot Cotton doing ASMR. It’s like an asthmatic’s dying breath that carries you down through the circles to Danny’s inferno. Plus you won’t hear tighter drums in hip hop outside of The Roots. Oh, and some bloke called Q-Tip is the executive producer. But this attitude leaves ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ criminally underrated, a JME sitting in the shadow of its iconic and monolithic older brother ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. That album is most likely his best. The beats alone play like the ‘The Irishman’s’ casting list. The man went bankrupt paying out for the samples for God’s sake. But that album is terrifying. It’s like canned anxiety. I cannot spoon with that album on a Sunday night, so whilst it’s undeniably his best work, it’s not my favourite. ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ is the entry point rather than the definitive album. If you like it then you have my blessing to check out ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ and ‘XXX’.
But has an album ever made you laugh? It’s a sensation that music rarely stimulates for me. I don’t think I even associate the two. Sure, there’s plenty of music that’s made me laugh at the expense of the artist, but I couldn’t name any album that doubles as stand-up. This is the USP here, the album’s engine. ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ is vacuum-packed with hilarious one-liners which escape the wear of the repeat listen. Instead, the punchlines are immortalised as quotables, never cheapening the tracks. In fact, this album boasts some of Danny’s showcase verses and it’s all because of THAT voice. Some things can only be said in THAT voice. It’s the same way that a short man can be cheekier than a tall one. The outrageousness of his voice blunts the crudeness of his words, giving you punchlines you’ve never heard any other rapper attempt, let alone pull off. On ‘Savage Nomad’ Danny drops the line ‘I ignore a whore like an email from LinkedIn’, pronouncing LinkedIn as Link-Ed-Din. ‘Dirty Laundry’ is a funky little track with laundry-based one-liners (‘put your life on the line, hang you out to dry … head was nasty, I think she had headlice’). But ‘Belly of the Beast’ is his best material. In one verse he apologises to his manhood for the way a woman treated it (‘She really ain’t mean it’), calls someone ‘a Stevie Wonder blink’, claims his likeness to Roy Orbinson makes him a ladies’ man and rounds it off with ‘a foursome with four fours, call that a twelve’. But it isn’t just a case of an outrageous voice being funnier than the punchlines themselves. Danny bends it to his will. It has a chameleonic effect, coming off as menacing on ‘Theme Song’ (‘Boy I’ll treat those little verses like the restroom, take my hand and dance with the Devil’) or slick on ‘Combat’ (‘I don’t give a fuck, I could talk a cat off the back of a fish truck’). Danny knows what he’s doing. That cheeky grin on the album cover is no candid.
I’m going to give this seemingly straight forward album an angle. To listen to Danny Brown is to jump ten toes into the debauched and crude. Allow me to quote the one breath intro from ‘Negro Spiritual’:
‘I’m on par like Tiger Woods with two white broads,
Off three Xanax, drunk driving in a rental car,
Boutta hit her with my best shot like Pat Benatar,
One got big tits, one got ass like centaur’.
You get my point – sex and drugs are Danny’s areas of expertise. And whilst no one rhymes like that, it’s not exactly sophisticated. But believe it or not, Danny’s music is reflective, full of self-loathing and almost baseless but relentless spirit. This album is light on the introspection though compared to his other releases. Usually that reflection is what offsets all the bars about Harry Monk. I think that’s also why this album hasn’t captured people’s hearts. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the album is shallow or even happy, despite what Danny proclaims (‘Ain’t no next life, so I’m living my best life’). That spirit feels muted here. He’s deeper in his register (‘My bassline’s thick like a Texas hoe’). It seems he’s resigned to the fate of his lifestyle, to die like a rockstar, picking up the bitter note that 2016’s ‘Hell For It’ left off on. To me it’s an angry and insolent record. Danny gives into being the savage nomad. ‘Change Up’ is an introspective cut, but instead of trying to escape he’s standing his ground and vows to never change (‘bite down, clench my teeth, knuckle up’). I don’t think that’s just typical rap hard nut talk. On ‘3 Tearz’ Danny dismisses any emotion (‘2 tearz in the bucket, fuck it. I don’t care about nothing’) and later, on ‘Savage Nomad’, he claims to be numb to feeling (‘Dealt with so much pain, I don’t even know what feeling is’). It’s quite a nihilistic record despite the production and acts as forebearer to the grave mood of ‘Quaranta’. There are glimpses of hope on ‘Shine’ where Danny is obsessed with time. He’s aware of his own mortality and wants to ‘Shine’ but doesn’t know how yet. And what does he resort to when the credits roll – ‘Combat’. Danny’s final message is ‘Nobody to trust that’s the way life goes’. It makes me wonder whether he’s winking from behind that panel or hiding behind it, burying his pain behind humour and wackiness.
Perhaps that’s reading into this album with the Hubble telescope. Someone told me recently that I have a ‘passion for my own thoughts’. It was meant genuinely, but I found it hilarious because it sounds like I indulge my own brain too much. I guess the previous paragraph is evidence enough of that. But love is about the flaws as well as the perfections, and perhaps I’m just defending the album’s weaknesses in a way that only the illogicality of love could. I’m serious about the ticket though. Buy me a pint on the night and it’s yours.
