Village Underground, Shoreditch
“This rap shit done saved my life and fucked it up at the same time.”
At the age of 42, Brown wades through the treacherous waters once more, shedding himself tonight of his all-black leather attire piece-by-piece as his latest LP, Quaranta, baptises his persona in front of the sold-out Shoreditch crowd.
The esteemed rapper from Detroit, Michigan has always had a frictional relationship within the rap game. Having openly discussed drug addiction, alcoholism and his once-hedonistic lifestyle, Danny Brown recognises his vices as well as the good fortune rapping has offered him over his illustrious 10+ year tenure.
Shortly into his highly-anticipated, long-awaited set, Brown begins imparting his findings (leather hat, gloves, boots included) from his newly-garnered lifestyle of abstinence: “Spitting for porches, rapping for a mortgage...Paid for a therapist but I still ain’t change.” One can’t help but feel the recent resonating words of André 3000 on attempting to rap at a similar age of 48 ("What am I going to rap about, my colonoscopy?"). The crowd, in response, remain tangibly tentative, relentlessly consuming Brown’s subdued swagger cut against the gun-slinging western spaghetti theme of his comeback single ‘Tantor’ and guitar-driven riffage of ‘Dark Sword Angel’ - a noticeable departure from the former days of booming 808s, grimey hooks and colourfully crass lyricism.
At long last, the crowd fuse together; a spark lit unto a room drenched in kerosene - fuelled by Brown’s recent collaboration with his rap extraordinaire-counterpart, JPEGMafia, by virtue of oddball tracks ‘Lean Beef Patty’ and ‘Scaring the Hoes’ from their collaborative debut, Scaring the Hoes. In spite of the latter’s absence tonight, Brown proves insatiably witty and insightful as ever, marked against the unique tongue of an inimitable nasally-inflected delivery forged within two of the most up-turned hip-hop singles released this year.
An excavation into the rapper’s earlier discography noticeably increases the audience’s interaction as well as Brown’s comfortability within the East London venue. “This place feels like home”, he openly confides, amidst the incandescent chaos brewed within the colourful concoction of 2013’s Old and 2016’s seminal landscape-altering Atrocity Exhibition recited tonight. Whilst the former offers copious amounts of bass-driven hooks tied to yesteryear's scene (‘Dip’; ‘Smokin & Drinkin’), the latter resurfaces Brown’s pinnacle: at the true height of his exuberant experimentalism, challenging his vocal chops in ‘When It Rain’, traversing drastic twists and turns through ‘Ain’t It Funny’; all to the smitten delight of the sold-out crowd cramped within tonight's brick-laden lair.
As Brown bows out on an ironically-tinged note (“Whoever thought I’d be the greatest growing up?”), it can be somewhat difficult to argue against the aged, markedly matured rapper. Boasting a broad barrage of bangers over the last decade, as well as his ongoing collaborations with such contemporaries, Danny Brown typifies one of the best-fared rappers in our current gaze - grounded by a instantly-recognisable delivery coupled with a tongue-in-cheek persona. Whilst his latest work may be deemed ‘safer’ compared to predecessors, tonight’s rap mogul yet proves an inimitable, incongruous force majeure, triumphing against trials and tribulations in his welcoming home at the nation’s capital.
7.5/10
Danny Brown's latest LP, Quaranta, is out now via Warp Records and can be found below.
Photo is courtesy of Antonio Olmos whose work can be found here.
Comentarios