Album Review: Quaranta by Danny Brown

Optics have always dictated the public's perception of Danny Brown. The shrill voice, frizzy emo hair and missing front teeth became central to his image over the last decade as he cultivated a reputation for being a deterrent to the longstanding tradition of Hip Hop. Add to that the self-destructive tendencies he would habitually air out on record and you had one of the most concerning, yet spectacular, disruptors to the culture.

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XXXX Quaranta lives and dies with its lyricism. When dream becomes job, friends become strangers, and aspects of yourself slip away, sacrificed to the climb: Brown rekindles all these demons, and more, in the bleakest birthday party, uh, ever? I say rekindles, for the insight provided on 40 is decidedly rear view mirror, looking backwards, previous, reflective. This isn't the in-the-moment hedonism-cum-terror of an XXX or Atrocity Exhibition; it comes with more perspective, less fish trapped in bowl, more therapy session circa soul retrieval.

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If you listen to Danny Brown's podcast – the Danny Brown Show – as much as I do, one of the things you can't ignore is how often he alludes to his continued struggles with substance and alcohol abuse and his citation of arriving late to the music industry as a key reason for his renegade middle aged behaviour. It's true, Brown wasn't what we would recognise as a bona fide star until about a decade ago, when he was already thirty two years old. Brown started out at a point when most of his peers were transitioning into the latter stages of their catalogue.

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