I tend to totally ignore comments on this website since 99% of them are total spam, and because I’m the only guy with real admin access to the site that means the other guys don’t get to see this stuff and harass me about actually good comments. Well, we got an actually good comment. This person named D (as far as I know) left a huge reply to my last review of Danny Brown’s XXX, and to make up for sleeping on it so long, I’m going to post it in full here and personally respond.
“I really like this interpretation of XXX.
On your opening paragraphs, I agree that among socially conscious, “hardline-tumblr” crowds, I often disguise, or at least partially conceal, many of my tastes in music. Artists who generally agree with my personal world view in their lyrics and in their interviews, like James Blake, Sufjan Stevens, or Dean Blunt, are generally easier to present to friends than those who do not, most noticeably Danny Brown, Quasimoto, and even MF DOOM to some degree. If I like the latter, then it’s assumed that I, in my ignorance, often rap along with lines like “I don’t give a bitch shit but hard dick and liquor”, oblivious to how degrading they are.
I think the problem with this is that artists like Clark or Tim Hecker have immediate “acceptability”. It is easy to accept that kind of music as experimental or complex because it SOUNDS like it. Meanwhile, Danny Brown, like many of the other rappers I mentioned, has an extremely vulgar, cartoony sound to most of his tracks, which, when laced with tones of misogyny and accepted drug use, turns many people off his music. He is mistakenly seen as endorsing the lifestyle he portrays in many of his songs; tracks like DNA and Party All the Time show that his true relationship with partying and drug use is far more complex and darker than Blunt After Blunt or Monopoly may make it seem. Many of the same people who claim that anyone who doesn’t like noise music isn’t “getting it” are actually guilty of not “getting it” when they claim that Danny Brown is an ignorant partyer. (Not that I have anything against that kind of music; I really enjoy far-out shit.)
I think what makes Danny Brown so great to listen to, especially XXX, is that it portrays an addict while on the drug. While addiction comes across in many other artists’ music, like Elliot Smith, Danny Brown shows the jittery, exciting, and intense feelings these drugs can give the user. It is obvious from later on the album, that he understands these drugs may kill him, but it still won’t stop his use.
Is it possible that people only superficially seeing XXX, and Danny Brown in general, may be leading him in a less experimental direction musically? There is still a huge market for people who WANT misogynistic and drug-fueled tracks, without the post-high commentary. And those who would appreciate the post-high Danny Brown may be too turned off by high Danny Brown to give him a fair shot. I think this may be connected to the fact that Danny Brown will perform party tracks like Monopoly and Blunt After Blunt often, without ever performing 30 or Party All the Time.
I still have mixed opinions on Old. It seems as though tracks like Smokin and Drinkin and Dip got way too much hype, while songs like Old or Wonderbread were largely ignored, with the exception of 25 Bucks.
What did you think of Old, and Danny Brown’s career after this album? Also, what do you think about the relationship in art between the portrayal of social ills and the criticism of these ills in general?
If you read this whole thing, thanks, it’s something your article made me think a lot about.”
Thanks again, D.
In retrospect, I regret saying “hardline-tumblr” because it’s maligning a group of people that have, at the least, found each other. It’s hard enough to find a couple of allies, and they’ve found a front line. Even if the fanatical zeal is offputting to me, I can’t hate too much on a group of people that mean well and put energy into trying to do good. I would way rather have an unforgiving horde aimed against injustice than for injustice if those are the only options I’m going to get.
The way rap and Danny Brown plays into this is there’s still this misunderstanding about portayal versus reality in the discussion of music. For some reason the lyric is assumed to be literal in regards to rap, but not other musical forms or even other written art forms. No one criticizes actors for the behaviors of their characters, but they are just as passionate about the portrayal as rappers are. Similarly, other rappers and actors take opportunities to speak frankly on truths in their forms. Yet it seems ridiculous to call out an actor for behaviors from other scenes and other films because this one time they used their platform to make a point versus the times they were using it to entertain. Obviously this makes Danny Brown particularly interesting as this dichotomy is central to his music in this decade, but I’ll get back to that.
This topic is also a place that clipping’s last two records inhabit, but I’m still waiting on salient phrasing to get into what they’ve done. They summarize it nicely at the very end of their CLPPNG album: “They wonder why the raps are full of floss and boss and murderers- cuz killing shit is less painful then feeling shit and the dead can’t be defendants.”
I don’t think that the pressures are leading Danny to be less experimental at all. In fact, those pressures are how the central idea behind Old gets expressed. Danny is very clearly portraying two images, and I interpret those images to be about the duality between being on and off stage. The first half is about the hardships of the Detroit environment that lead to a character as wild as the one people are asking for. Meanwhile the second half is all hype and stage songs, written for the festival crowds by his own admission. The structural hint to this is Red 2 Go. The song is an act of hyping himself to go out on stage and be the Danny people are paying to see. “Tired of where I came form but I know where I’m going.” Then Side B is all the hype shit people expect to hear. 8 tracks about the life, 8 tracks about the spectacle, divided by a clean transition.
Where the pressures come in is the “Side” markers. I think that Danny Brown was probably frustrated that no one saw the conceptual structure behind XXX and that lead him to explicitly title those songs as the signs that there were differences in the record. There were no markers on XXX to desginate tonal shifts aside from the representation of the music itself. Also, going into Old, some people (like a good friend of mine who I won’t put on blast, but you know who you are) never made it to Act 3 of XXX often enough to know he has a different tone other than the wild character. So Danny’s still entirely about the album as a cohesive work of art but feels he needs to be more explicit for people to be ready to read what he’s doing in that way. It seems to have not worked that well either: reviews see that there are two sides but make little effort to make sense of the interaction and the implications.
Despite all those words, I don’t really like Old that much. His flow is more predictable and it makes a lot of those songs unmemorable for me. It’s not poorly made at all, it’s just not a favorite. I’ll still listen to what he puts out next because whatever it is it’ll be well thought out, and I appreciate that.
I think the relationship between portrayal and criticism is frustrating. I’m sure this’ll read as cynical, but to me that we have to make explicit that portrayal is or is not criticism is I think a failing of art appreciation is cultivated in Western culture. Too often portrayal is seen as endorsement and glorification which puts an unfair risk of social stigma upon artists for essentially not acting on the surface level. Granted, there are some topics at this point that should be treated with more dignity than they’ve been afforded in the past (trans people, sexual assault, etc). At the same time, a part of understanding things like inhumane actions is to see them from the perspective of the purpotrator, and art allows us to witness things from that perspective without direct physical risk. This of course brings us right back around to Danny Brown, and how he’s percieved.
I think that about covers it. Thanks for coming this dumb site, and I’m sorry that took a month to respond to.
Fermata over Whole Rest 