When Danny Brown spoke to the Guardian in 2023, he used to be promoting the approach simultaneous liberate of two albums, his luxuriate in Quaranta and Scaring the Hoes, a collaboration with Jpegmafia that commenced with most certainly the 365 days’s most diverting opening lyric: “First – fuck off, Elon Musk.” Both albums had been recorded in what sounded love desperate situations.
Brown had prolonged performed on his image as a drug-guzzling maniac, too crazed to be contained by any of hip-hop’s common generic boundaries: posing for photos alongside with his hair wildly backcombed, his lacking enamel on fats point to, his tongue out and his fingers in devil’s horns, telling interviewers “I’m correct in a position to die – everything after this point is, love, regardless of”; relating to his songs as “trauma dumps” and calling them things love Adderall Admiral, White Traces, Dope Fiend Condo, Need One other Drink and Die Adore a Rockstar. By the time he made Quaranta and Scaring the Hoes, nevertheless, he used to be in extreme disaster: “blackout inebriated” when recording the latter, “in wretchedness the total time, throwing up and shit” sometime of the making of the extinct. By the time of the interview, he’d been to rehab and got sober: ostensibly a happy ending, nevertheless Brown struck a degree to of caution. “I’ve viewed so many artists bring together sober,” he acknowledged. “And their tune sucks.”
Even the note itemizing of Stardust suggests here’s an album made below very varied situations to its predecessors. The post-rehab positivity of tune titles Carry You Up and 1L0v3myL1f3! isn’t meant satirically. Interestingly written from the perspective of an invented personality known as Dusty Notable particular person, a “90s-skills pop essential particular person” who nevertheless sounds remarkably love Danny Brown, the lyrics luxuriate in appealingly chaotic trip, eclectic reference ingredients – at one juncture, he goes from Aldous Huxley’s Valorous Original World to Winona Ryder’s 2001 shoplifting payment in the gap of two traces – and evidently heartfelt advice: “You’ve perfect got one life so stick alongside with your wishes.” There are moments that peep serve to a past when the songs’ protagonist had, as guest Angel Prost locations it in one of loads of spoken-word interjections: “You resign your self to delinquency, quirkifying your life.” In varied locations, What You Gape offers a prolonged, rueful apology for past behaviour, quoting Outkast’s Ms Jackson alongside the advance.
Nonetheless Brown’s rhymes are nowhere approach as conflicted as those on Quaranta, an album on which even the wildest boasts had been straight away undercut by expressions of loneliness and torment. And the supporting solid on Stardust – 12 of the 14 tracks have guest stars – skews far extra heavily against names from the hyperpop underground and varied other arena of interest electronic hinterlands than it does to hip-hop: Frost Formative years, 8485, Underscores, Jane Remover et al.
This isn’t fully uncharted territory for Brown – his 2013 album Old used to be liberally sprinkled with manufacturing credits for maximalist electronic auteur Rustie and he’s talked about his remorse that he never set to work with Sophie – nevertheless the results are remarkably full of life. There are moments where Stardust sounds extra poppy and obviously hook-weighted down than Brown has ever done earlier than. You would possibly maybe per chance per chance per chance presumably presumably correct about imagine the dwelling-influenced Copycats or the 8485 feature Flowers on the radio, had been it no longer for Brown’s nasal, yowling divulge: extremely efficient, top for adding a snotty edge to his hugely challenging tag of cartoonish threats and brags – “I ponder going bonkers and knocking out your chompers” – nevertheless very powerful an got model.
Equally, nevertheless, Stardust is greater than in a position to dealing in bracingly confrontational blare. 1999 is a painfully trebly, glitching chiptune at a gabber-love move. For 1l0v3myl1f3!, his newfound positivity is backed by a beat that sounds love somebody taking half in an extinct happy hardcore note on a turntable with a knackered stylus and most incessantly dips into half-move drops that, whereas electronic, have something of a metallic tune about them.
As soon as in some time, the switch between pop mode and chaos occurs mid-note. The Dwell facets no longer correct Zheani, a corpse-paintedformer mannequin from Australia perfect identified for her 2023 note Carry Moist Cunt, nevertheless ta Ukrainka, the latter an instance of Brown’s ability to search out collaborators in the farthest reaches of the accumulate: she’s a Polish indie-pop artist who looks to be moderately imprecise even in the universe of Polish indie-pop. Her sweetly mellifluous divulge acts as a foil to Brown’s warp-move gallop, in powerful the the same advance as the backing note’s pillowy synths and tender piano figures tender out the ferocious drum’n’bass spoil. Then, midway through, the total thing erupts, Brown’s vocal combating with a nightmarish mass of chattering sampled voices.
It’s one of loads of moments which would possibly maybe maybe per chance presumably provoke a pointy consumption of breath on the phase of the listener, which is presumably the point. “I made it here against the potentialities, now I invent it occupied with you,” he swaggers on closer All4U. He sounds love a man who’s conscious of he’s beaten no longer correct his demons, nevertheless his fears: an illustration that Brown’s edge has no longer been dulled by sobriety as he worried it would possibly maybe well per chance per chance presumably.
This week Alexis listened to
Lankum – Ghost Town
A quilt of the Specials’ traditional that begins as if Lankum conception the common used to be too upbeat for its luxuriate in appropriate, then midway through transforms itself into … a banging dance note. Unexpected.