The anticipated follow-up to 2013’s Old, Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition is a masterfully crafted album that shows the Detroit rapper heading into riveting new music frontiers with nightmarish soundscapes and creative psychedelic beats.
When an artist like Danny Brown releases two hip-hop album masterpieces like 2011’s XXX and 2013’s Old, it can be excused that a follow-up will not reach these heights of excellence. Brown is no quitter though and gives listeners an album experience like nothing we’ve seen from the Detroit rapper before, placing it as one of the strongest releases of the year.
First signs that Brown was going in a different direction with this album was signing up with music label Warp Records that represents notable ground-breaking artists such as Aphex Twin and Flying Lotus. Danny continued to tease us with the release of tracks such as “When It Rain’ and ‘Pneumonia’, showing that he was moving further into grimy, psychologically horrifying tracks on his new album.
The final product of Atrocity Exhibition certainly shows a more experimental Danny Brown with a range of chilling sounds and beats. This is not the Molly-popping, party animal we have come to love. This is a new, wonderfully disturbing Danny Brown.
This is immediately evident with the first track ‘Downward Spiral’. While its the usual business of Brown in a drugged out state, it’s not a flashy opening but rather a dreamlike, hypnotic beat that one would find filling their ear drums after a night of heavy partying. Paranoia, confusion, isolation. All within the first track with a stunning psychedelic guitar riff moving along to Brown’s trademark high-pitched vocals.
A few tracks in, listeners have either settled into the dazed state or been scared away. For the next forty minutes, Danny Brown takes us through a collection of otherworldly tracks that all add something new to the rapper’s discography.
Songs like ‘Tell Me What I Don’t Know’ and ‘From The Ground’ have Danny replace his energetic rhythm with a more sombre performance. The former especially has to be one of the best tracks Brown has ever crafted, utilising a disturbing 80s John Carpenter-influenced synthesiser beat.
A track like ‘Rolling Stone’, which astonishingly was constructed through conversations over Twitter with South African singer Petite Noir, is like nothing Brown has ever put out instrumentally with tragic lyrics expressing the feeling of a man going nowhere, sharing obvious links with Bob Dylan’s classic ‘Like A Rolling Stone’.
Brown then includes incredibly experimental tracks like the bizarre ‘Lost’ that includes a warped female vocal sample, the chaotic beat of ‘Ain’t It Funny’ and the use of tribal chants in ‘Dance In The Water’.
The latter half of the album then takes on a more frightening tone with tracks like ‘Pneumonia’ that includes uncredited vocals from rapper ScHoolboy Q and ‘When It Rain’, a nightmarish depiction of the streets of Detroit that only gets better upon every listening.
While the album is not littered with featuring artists, it has a welcome collection of known names that are all utilised well within Danny’s vision. ‘Really Doe’ brings Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul & Earl Sweatshirt together to make for a track that would fit perfectly into a horror film with its echoing bell sounds. Danny also brings the dream collaboration with B-Real from Cypress Hill in a calming, hallucinogenic track ‘Get Hi’.
Any qualms from the album, it has to be the final track ‘Hell for It’ that has yet to warm up to me, feeling like a disappointing inclusion considering Danny’s other strong concluding tracks ‘Float On’ on Old and the outstanding ’30’ from XXX. This is a small criticism however when considering the multitude of tracks and sounds Danny incorporates and plays with on this LP.
It will be interesting to see how Atrocity Exhibition holds up with the fans of Danny Brown. It will not please every die-hard fan of Brown. Those that were excited by his ‘Molly’-induced tracks from his last album may be put off by this more experimental, sinister vision. In my mind though, Danny Brown is an artist that is not afraid of trying new things and this nightmarish album is a musical odyssey that just keeps getting better after every listening. One can only hope that Warp Records and Danny continue to bring out such outstanding material.
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