Album Review: Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿
As much as Danny Brown's nasally voice and goofy offbeat persona can be disarming, his more inane tendencies serve only to mask the incredible, thoughtful lyricist hiding underneath a guise of crude punchlines and drug references. 2013's XXX and 2016's Atrocity Exhibition are unequivocally two of the decade's best hip hop albums; the former a poignant lo-fi exploration of Danny's fears, regrets, and addictions, and the latter an insane, post-punk influenced dive into the most gruesome corners of substance abuse. While 2015's Old represented a slight dip in quality, it was generally understood that this was Danny's attempt to craft a more commercial record, and thus fans refused to hold it against his still blatant genius. It would be reasonable to choose to go in that direction again (given that clearing all the samples used on Atrocity Exhibition ate heavily into Danny's pockets), but from the get-go uknowhatimsayin¿ was shaping up to be the exact opposite. That its features included oddball names like Run The Jewels, JPEGMAFIA, and Blood Orange was potent enough, but the production credits read like a who’s who of modern hip hop’s most underappreciated figures: Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Standing on the Corner, the aforementioned JPEGMAFIA, and more. Most exciting of all, Q-Tip of the legendary rap group A Tribe Called Quest was not only executive producing, but had a personal hand in the beats on multiple tracks. How could this record be anything but amazing?
It is for all these reasons that uknowhatimsayin¿ being so clearly a step down from much of Danny’s past work is such a disappointment, even if the end result is still a more than capable rap album. Most cuts on here simply lack the thematic coherence and lyrical bite that his past projects channeled in spades; as outwardly serious as the opener Change Up appears, any hunger or boldness Danny manages to convey on top of the dusty, percussion-heavy beat is not reinforced throughout the rest of the album. The string-heavy Theme Song sounds similarly retro with its stuttered vocal sample and echoed string melodies, yet Danny’s lyrics, despite a thoughtful nod to the late rapper Prodigy, amount to little more than feckless bragging and posturing. Running barely over half an hour, by the time it is over Danny’s description of this record as his “stand-up comedy album” seems sadly accurate. Danny has little to offer in the way of messages or morals; he comes off as eager to get on stage and get his ‘set’ over with as quickly as possible, and the results are superficially enjoyable yet offers little reason to dive deeper into his words.
3 Tearz (produced by JPEGMAFIA) is the first major misstep; while El-P’s guest verse finds him sporting both an impressive flow and creative references to The Big Lebowski and MF DOOM (“True doom, eat up your crew like MM… FOOD“), fellow Run The Jewels member Killer Mike offers little more than vague, sterile political bars, and Danny’s unimpressive verse also seems to suffer from being improperly mixed. His voice in particular clashes terribly with the already dry, sterile percussion, a baffling case of amateur production that should be unthinkable coming from such a confluence of music industry legends. Flying Lotus and Thundercat work together to craft a subdued yet frantic instrumental on Negro Spiritual, yet even the latter’s impeccable bass playing cannot distract from the bizarre spectacle of JPEGMAFIA doing his best Pharrell impression on the song’s hook in lieu of a guest verse (another questionable decision giving Peggy’s obvious skill on the mic). Despite the brilliance of experimental sound collage group Standing on the Corner being behind the production on Shine, the track sounds disturbingly unremarkable and represents perhaps the greatest waste of talent on the entire record; if anyone could rap proficiently on top of their aberrant style, it would be Danny Brown, yet he fails to even get the chance to try.
The closest we get to the eccentric, ingenious Danny Brown of Atrocity Exhibition is Belly of the Beast, an indescribably eerie cut with a beat that feels impossible to rap over yet, in true Danny style, he fits right at home on. His trademark drug bars share space with quips like “I eat so many shrimp I got iodine poison/Hoes on my dick ’cause I look like Roy Orbison”, but the hook provided by Obongjayar keeps the mood appropriately sinister: “This can’t be real, I’m in a dream/I don’t have skin, I just shine/They can’t contain me, I’m free/It feels like losing your mind”. Luckily, Danny is equally adept at rapping over more traditional instrumentals; album closer Combat is unabashedly old-school, with Q-Tip (the track's producer) and fellow Tribe alumnus Consequence even making a subtle appearance towards the track’s end. Danny still manages to steal the show, however, with a stuttered, restrained flow that keeps the listener guessing and consistently unprepared for some of the funniest bars on the whole album: “The Henny got me wetter than whale piss/I die for this shit like Elvis”.
More than anything else, what ends up saving the album is the obscene amount of raw talent channeled by the amalgamation of so many legendary figures working on a single project. Danny may have less of import to say than on his previous projects, but the lyrics he does spit still have his trademark blend of obscenity, hilarity, and expertise. Dirty Laundry, easily the most stellar track here, is a salacious chronicle of Danny's escapades, his inane metaphors keeping everything right on the border between reality and fantasy. On top of a Q-Tip beat that perfectly blends classic boom-bap melodies with more modern hip hop percussion, Danny slips in nods to The Temptations ("Papa was a rolling stone, so I sold rocks to 'em"), Arm & Hammer, and Bounty paper towels ("The way she slurp slurp, she's the quicker picker upper"), capping off everything with a story of paying a stripper with his laundry money. The sugar-sweet Best Life deserves credit simply for being such a drastic change of pace for the normally grim, dour Danny; the saccharine production and sampling is undeniably catchy, and the lyrics concerning his rags-to-riches life experience are oddly inspiring: "'Cause ain't no next life, so now I'm tryna live my best life".
For what it's worth, this album does appear to be a result of Danny Brown living his 'best life': while he still litters his lyrics with drug references, the crippling addictions and suicidal tendencies of his past projects are notably absent, hopefully a reflection of an improved life situation. No one should feel that they must put themselves through hell in order to make good art, and uknowhatimsayin¿ more than proves that Danny's innate creativity and shameless hilarity are enough to fuel a competent rap album. But if Danny does wish to recap the magic of XXX or Atrocity Exhibition without relapsing into the darker chapters of his life, it would seem he needs to find a new purpose to put behind his bars, as here any sort of larger theme or deeper message is woefully lacking. Perhaps this project was simply Danny's way of balancing out the dense, foreboding atmosphere of his last record, but the result cannot help but be dissatisfying given that Danny has proven he is capable of so much more.
7/10
Favourite Tracks: Dirty Laundry, Savage Nomad, Best Life