Danny Brown- Atrocity Exhibition

10/10

Imagine yourself in San Francisco during the summer of love. You've been dropping acid for 4 days straight, and you find yourself at some dive bar, listening to a house band playing long strung out psych rock instrumentals, that have been released by the band on a small boutique label. A label which would soon become defunct and would fade into obscurity as does the band. The band used off kilter time signatures and spiralling guitar leads creating haze and dissonance.

Now imagine yourself in 2016, listening to Danny Brown's latest album Atrocity Exhibition.

All though the pictures I tried to paint for you seem worlds apart, one being a hippie in 1967 in San Fran, and one being you listening to a hip-hop album from a moderately successful and acclaimed rapper in 2016, remnants of this kind of music permeate Brown's latest effort.

More than ever, I can hear these psych rock samples woven in to these tracks. A few critics have already touched on this, and most have agreed that although it sounds like the tracks that are being sampled are jarring, and hard to follow along with the verses, it seems to work really well.

Having a big fondness of Brown's last LP "Old" goes a long way when dipping into this new project.

Danny Brown's flow has also been idiosyncratic and slightly wacky, and that doesn't change on Atrocity Exhibition. In fact it gets wackier, and seems to build into a crescendo of weirdness as the album progresses. 

Brown's signature flow is on display from beginning to end. 

From the opening track "Downward Spiral" we see a despondant and emotionally drained Brown,  he spits lines out about passion-less sex, smoking blunts and just being reclusive in general.  This track sets the tone for the album. Brown wants you to understand that what you are about to embark on may not pleasant.

"Tell Me What I Don't Know" just re-enforces this, however the style of flow on this harks back more to the mixtape era of Danny Brown, which will be welcomed by many longtime fans. The beat drops in with this amazing acid tribal vamp which transforms the track again. The use of sampling is a real feature of this LP, more than ever before on a Danny Brown.

"Rolling Stone" fetishises it's own hopelessness. It's message of leave me be, I want to self destruct in private. But at the same time it is a cry for help, this runs through Atrocity Exhibition. 

"Really Doe" sees an ensemble posse cut featuring Kendrick Lamar Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt. Black Milk is producing and really brings it to this track. The verses are awesome and the track never gets too cluttered. Earl's verses are on point and really give this track something.

"Lost" continues delving into excess, we are in the midst of a lost period of the protagonist's life. The utter carelessness with which this person lives is obviously about to come unstuck. 

By now we have a feeling of being on an extended bender of some sort, total abandon ensues, money spent, bottles smashed, lines slammed, adult consummation and destruction. 

Cocaine is a big theme through Atrocity Exhibition. It is referenced in nearly track on this. We can see this as a vice, perhaps a crutch. There are moments when Brown acknowledges the habit of the character in these songs, only to then say that it has become who they are. There is emotional distance but at times extremely confrontational.

We never really have any kind of resolution, maybe there isn't supposed to be, maybe there isn't a message in the tracks. But then I think, well.... I can look from the outside looking in, maybe we need to identify when things are wrong, or find a way to identify it. 

"Get Hi" outlines how apathy can be endearing when coupled with chemical assistance, jazzmen namedropping is awesome on this, and the verses are really on point. Again a total admittance of the beauty of marijuana, and it's ability to dull all the bad things happening to you.

The closer "Hell For It" feels a like a summation of what proceeded it. Although it feels like a prologue to a story, a very loose thread kept throughout Atrocity Exhibition.  Brown raps about his origins, how he built his career up and the struggle of getting there. 

The final moment of clarity in a way. That the downward spiral is now trending up. 

"So my task
Is inspire your future with my past
I lived through that shit
So you don’t have to go through it"

Thanks for showing us the way, Danny.

Callan Cummings