To spend time in Danny Brown’s world is to never be entirely comfortable. It’s one where the angles are sometimes all off, a space where things aren’t quite what they seem. And it’s never been more vividly realised than it is on ‘Atrocity Exhibition’.
Here we have the full weight of the Detroit rapper’s creative desires dropped into our laps. Lyrically dense, technically challenging and musically off-kilter, this is an LP that takes pleasure in doing things the hard way. Brown spins yarns over instrumentals that, at times, can barely be described as having a beat, while also pocking the surface with surprising melodic hits.
It picks up on the agitated state the aspiring rapper swam in on ‘XXX’, with his desire to break through replaced with the realisation that life at (or close to) the top is a worry all of its own. If ‘Old’, his last record, ended on a wild note with the sometimes brutal hedonism of its second half, ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ picks up the pieces and finds that its back hurts from the effort.
On the Joy Division song that the record takes its title from, Ian Curtis murmurs: “For entertainment they watch his body twist.” It’s easy to see Brown, under the weight of his bugged out persona, viewing us as the leering masses pressed up against the glass.
But, from the opening seconds of Downward Spiral, a cocktail of shut-in anxiety, depressing sexual misadventures and metallic flourishes, Brown is also under his own microscope. “Everybody say you got a lot to be proud of,” he raps. “Been high this whole time, don’t realise what I done. When I’m all alone, feel like no one care.”
His lower register comes over as reflective, while his yelp is perhaps tinged with more desperation than ever before. The confluence of his past and present (and what his hopes for that present might have been) is a constant source of friction, even seeping into the hooks performed by guests. Petite Noir, on Rolling Stone, sounds positively defeated: “You know I'm living like a rolling stone...but don't feel for me.”
The producers Brown collaborates with are similarly attuned to the album’s overarching atmosphere. Paul White takes the lion’s share of the tracks and much of the credit for their ever-shifting sonics, but Evian Christ also knocks one out of the park on the jittery, aggressive Pneumonia. Black Milk, meanwhile, creates an undulating canvas for Brown, Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt to trade blows on the all star Really Doe. Earl, in particular, is in his element here as the song circles ever downward.
‘Atrocity Exhibition’ is a work of sprawling ambition that at times feels oppressively small. Brown is very good at utilising the unexpected to his advantage, but so many of its most audacious musical manoeuvres are executed while he picks through the minutiae of his own life and psyche. The result is a record that never lets you settle, but also one that demands you try to understand it. That effort will be rewarded over and over again.
Danny Brown Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu November 10 2016 - LONDON Electric Brixton
Fri November 11 2016 - MANCHESTER Store Street
Sat November 12 2016 - GLASGOW O2 ABC Glasgow
Mon November 14 2016 - DUBLIN Academy
Tue November 15 2016 - LEEDS University Stylus
Wed November 16 2016 - BIRMINGHAM Rainbow Warehouse
Thu November 17 2016 - BRIGHTON Old Market
Fri November 18 2016 - BRISTOL Marble Factory
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