Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿

The Guardian 100

(Warp)

Nearing 40, pathologically indiscreet, drug-guzzling Detroit rapper Danny Brown has grown up and started taking his career seriously. Sensible haircut, straightened teeth and his own chat show, albeit one on which A$AP Rocky fondly recalls Brown slipping him his first Viagra. Rap legend Q-Tip does some heavy beatlifting alongside Brown’s creative collaborator Paul White, and the results are sensational. Where Brown’s ebullience and spiky flow conjure the claustrophobic intensity of a party at its peak, Tip brings space and melody to sugar the rapper’s nasal squawks.

What makes Brown so cherishable is that he clearly loves rap’s golden age and kings like Outkast and Wu-Tang without standing in thrall to them. Theme Song nods to Cypress Hill, but the music is much more wraithlike than thuggish, even when the words quote Mike Tyson at his most brutal. Belly of the Beast sounds like an André 3000 interior monologue on a planet slipping out of orbit, with its cinematic sound effects and wobbly progress. Brown’s storytelling is as witty as ever, with pungent bars that pop like pimples, spattering tracks with quotable filth. His best work by a distance.

Pitchfork 81

On his fifth album, executive-produced by Q-Tip, Danny Brown ascends to a sort of hip-hop classicist nirvana and remains one of the most inventive and dimensional rappers working today.