Danny Brown is theatrical, raw and unfiltered. He is known for his distinctive characters: one defined by a deep voice and more serious subject matter, and another high-pitched wacky character, all for partying, fame, and everything that comes with it. I became a fan after listening to his album Old a couple years back, and I’m honestly a little ashamed to be so late to the party. His new album, Atrocity Exhibition digs deep into the rowdier of his two personas, playing up the drama and of course, packing in tons of bangers including the pulsing “Really Doe” (featuring the beloved Kendrick Lamar) and soon to be dance floor breakdown “Pneumonia.” I, like many, been listening to his album on repeat almost exclusively since it dropped. For a rapper with such personality and such a great new release, I had high expectations for his live performance.
The crowd was one to tackle, as seeing between the plethora of 6-foot-or-taller men and catching a breath amongst the nicotine vaporizer smoke and suffocating testosterone was challenging before the dancing even started. The opener was decent but painfully cliché, and honestly made me question whether this show would live up to the expectation I built it up to be. However, when the lights shifted into place for his approaching set all my doubts went away, and I was tingling with excitement.
His set followed a pattern I had never seen before—working through his top hits from oldest to newest. Thus, as I am so much more knowledgeable about his more recent work, it took me a while to really get into his set. His performance was much simpler than I expected, with just a solid blue backdrop, and nothing on the stage but the DJ setup. Additionally, he had almost no interaction with the audience between songs other than when he stuck out his iconic pointy tongue and proudly thrust his hand in the air in a “rock on” symbol. However, something about his goofy presence was so endearing, the crowd went wild after every song. When he rapped he crushed every line, and even when he had the audience finish the lyric (one of my biggest pet peeves with rap shows) he looked so blissfully entertained that I never got sick of it. By the time he got to songs from the Atrocity Exhibition the audience’s energy was through the roof, and nobody in the crowd could stand still. I danced until I was drenched in sweat, going back and forth between moshing in the pit to getting down with my friends and then to the perimeter of the pit again. In the end, I could not have been more satisfied. With his simple set, likeable personality, and raw talent, Danny Brown has now become my definition for the perfect, quintessential Hip-Hop show.
-Veronica Irwin (Hunnypot Editor at Large)
@vronirwin
Photo Credit: Subterranean Suburbs
