Danny Brown isn’t a fan of making straightforward, easy-to-listen-to opening tracks. Since his 2011 breakthrough album XXX, the opening songs on his projects have been challenging, dissonant pieces of art-rap — willfully weird theses for records that dissect rap music while celebrating it.
“Downward Spiral,” the post-rock inspired starting pistol to the eternally helium-filled Detroit rapper’s newest album, Atrocity Exhibition, not only pays homage to the first song on XXX (“It’s the downward spiral, got me suicidal”), but sets the blueprint for Brown’s strangest, most-worthwhile release yet.
Atrocity Exhibition doesn’t just take its title from Joy Division’s six-minute opus of the same name, it bases its whole musical mission statement on the track. The beats on Atrocity Exhibition star whirling guitars, bouncy, off-the-walls percussion and often, very little resembling traditional rap instrumentation. Where Brown’s last album, 2013’s Old, contrasted the weird rap roots of his industrial hometown’s hip-hop roots with the day-glo sheen of EDM trap, his latest is 15 songs of increasingly insular, consistently out-there rap.
Brown’s beat selection has always been his most obvious quality as an artist — ignoring his high-pitched yelp of a voice, of course. But even if you go into Atrocity Exhibition expecting unique, otherworldly production, the album’s beats are in a league of their own. “Tell Me What I Don’t Know” stars a somber sounding Brown over a bed of analog synths, ’70s guitar and frantic breakbeats. Lead single “When It Rain” is a never-ceasing slice of footwork that builds and builds and builds without ever letting up. And even weirder is the mid-album stretch of songs from “Lost” to “White Lines,” which features nearly indescribable beats — a blend of warped, lost-record samples and Detroit house and Dilla-indebted drums.
In a lot of ways, Atrocity Exhibition sounds like the direct predecessor to XXX. The instrumentals are gritty from start to finish, and the lyrics combine Brown’s street tales with witty brags and punchlines. On “Ain’t It Funny,” he raps “It’s a living nightmare that most of us might share/ Inherited in our blood, it’s why we stuck in the mud” and “Locksmith of Hip Hop, appraisal the wrist watch/ The rocks bout the size as the teeth in Chris Rock’s mouth,” both obviously different flip sides of the same story. More than most rappers with these types of stories to tell, Brown takes his job as a writer very seriously. Unlike Gucci Mane or Jeezy — both masters of the no-frills, true-crime rap narrative — Brown takes creative license with his stories.
“Got me missing sleep ’cause my mind on the beat/ So while I’m counting bars y’all be counting sheep,” he spits on the subtle rags-to-riches track “From the Ground.”
But while, thematically, most of the album is grounded in a retrospective look at Brown’s journey from Detroit dealer to critically-loved rap weirdo, there are still some bars for bars sake. “Really Doe” throws itself into the ring for “best posse cut of the 2010s” with hot verses from Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt (who steals the show with his blunted wit and lines like “I was a liar as a kid so now I’m honest as fuck”). And almost every song here stars a few classic Brown lines — descriptions so weird and brilliant they deserve reviews of their own.
Admittedly, Atrocity Exhibition is perhaps Brown’s least accessible album to date — which is saying something considering none of his releases to date have been destined for the radio airwaves. But the challenge it presents to the listener ends up being the album’s greatest strength: It’s the type of project that demands a second listen immediately after the first one. And Brown’s unique charisma, which seeps through the discordant beats, off-the-wall flows and intense storytelling, makes that a wild experience — but certainly not a chore.
