Album Review: Stardust by Danny Brown

With his latest outing, one of hip hop's most distinct talents finds himself orbiting in the hyperpop sphere for a genre-blending odyssey delving into bouts with depression, substance abuse, love -- and, ultimately, finding a sense of purpose through it all. Stardust is Brown's sixth solo studio album, and even though it's his first full-length foray into hyperpop, it's more notably the first entire project he's written and recorded since becoming sober. This lifestyle change is apparent in the music; not only in the content, but also in the clarity of his delivery, with every word feeling all the more resolute.

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Stardust is Danny Brown out to make a point. His first album made in total sobriety, it finds him collaborating with a host of underground musicians, from animated digital junglists to indie-pop singer-songwriters to Polish rappers, most of whom are about half his age. Brown has built a career as an iconoclast and experimenter who's as likely to conjure memories of syrupy LuckyMe production while rapping about Evanescence (Starburst) as he is to compare women to Pokémon over chiptune beats (1999).

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You probably were if you were into hyperpop, at least. For everyone who partook in those virtual Zoom concerts and massive Discord-server conversations, hyperpop felt like the center of the world: a new musical scene that truly felt like the future, constructing and contorting and redefining itself in real time for thousands of young netizens stuck in their rooms. Experimental-rap artiste Danny Brown was just as enthralled by the movement as the rest of us.

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The spirit of late-90s Britney Spears must have possessed Danny Brown. . .

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After the storm clouds part, clarity. 'Stardust' is Danny Brown's seventh solo album, and the first to be written and recorded entirely sober. After years of his substance use being something that he folded into his wildman persona, he had audibly hit a wall on his last record, 2023's 'Quaranta' - an unusually sombre piece of work that had his vulnerabilities on full show.

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Set against some of the strangest, most adventurous beats in his discography to date, Danny Brown's Stardust finds the Detroit rapper discovering a new lust for life. "Everything I went through had me drowning on the surface/Discovered who I am, now I know my life purpose," he declares on the triumphant intro "The Book of Daniel." Brown sounds especially alive on the title track and "Copycats," two braggadocious bangers that see him, both lyrically and sonically, asserting his role as one of hip-hop's bravest and boldest weirdos. Recognizing his status as an elder statesman, he acknowledges the circular ecosystem of inspiration that drives each generation of rappers to influence each other on the latter track.

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Not to fixate on age, but it is impossible to articulate the magnitude of Danny Brown's luminosity without emphasizing that he's 44 years old. Keep in mind he was a late bloomer, so his contemporaries in the commercial sector were about a decade younger than him on average. Yet, even in 2025, he sounds like the future of music, while most of his peers have retreated into safe territories to fortify their longevity.

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