Tag Archives: atrocity exhibition

#1138: Danny Brown ft. Petite Noir – Rolling Stone

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Thinking about it now, Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition was the hip-hop album I’d been waiting for my entire life up until its release in September 2016. I remember the time well. I’d just started what was to be my final year of university, and Brown surprise-released it three days earlier than what it was officially announced to be. Set up Spotify, ‘Downward Spiral’ started, and when the song’s first chorus hit, I knew I was in for something very, very special. Unfortunately, there’s only one more song from Atrocity… that I’ll be able to speak about on here. But if the album had been released four years sooner, you’d see a larger representation of it on the site.

The album is one grim, disturbing look into Brown’s hedonistic lifestyle, one that he repeatedly states to the listener could lead to the end of him and leaves him feeling numb inside despite the pleasures of sex and drugs that come along with it. ‘Rolling Stone’, the third track, is one of the gems that provides another window into the rapper’s thought on the matter. Brown knows that he’s going down this road of self-destruction and only indulges in more excess to aim in easing the pain, which only makes things worse. It’s a lonely life to live, is what the song is trying to tell you. Alongside Danny Brown is Petite Noir on the choruses and the outro, who also produced the track having contacted Brown on Twitter and initiated a back-and-forth of ideas between the two.

That keyboard(?) melody the song starts with (and appears throughout) is too catchy. There are a lot of times when I’m just nodding to the groove and singing along to it rather than listening to the lyrics. There’s that moment where a ghostly vocal comes in singing the melody during Brown’s second verse, almost drowning his voice out in the process, which makes me think it’s meant to symbolise much more darker than its appealing tone would suggest. Danny Brown has the beat in his pocket, spitting out his lines with the trademark barking yelp of his. Funny to think that this song might not have happened at all had Brown not been awake at four in the morning and been checking his DMs.

#769: Danny Brown – Lost

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‘Lost’ by Danny Brown has a bit of an unfair position in the tracklist of Atrocity Exhibition, sandwiched between ‘Really Doe’ – the posse cut featuring Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Earl Sweatshirt – and ‘Ain’t It Funny’ which is one of the most insane hip-hop tracks put to tape. Because of this, ‘Lost’ can seem almost like an interlude; it’s just short of two and a half minutes in length and there aren’t so many production tricks that will wow you immediately on first listen. But it’s those extra listens that reveal how substantial the track is.

What grabbed my attention the first few times was the instrumental loop that keeps the track flowing. Taking a few seconds from Lena Lim’s ‘Flame of Love (戀之火)’, producer Playa Haze creates a strange, skipping backdrop of a stuttering vocal and a wandering horn melody that adds to the spooky vibe. Reminds me of RZA’s production on 36 Chambers which isn’t a bad thing. Danny Brown comes in with no restraint, comparing himself to Stanley Kubrick and a pimp within the first few opening lines of his first verse.

This track, keeping in the same tone with every other song on the album, details Danny’s descent into his downward spiral, but also looks at things in a more confident and optimistic manner(?). Before Brown was a rapper he made and sold cocaine to get his racks up, and now that he is famous he has all the money he needs to buy a whole lot of it. Despite the rampant drug use, he still never managed to get too far gone and kept his head in the game to get success. I think that’s a lesson that’s worth learning. I guess Brown was fond of the track, and so made a music video for it as you can see above. It’s more disturbing than what I envision when listening to the song. Make of it what you will.