Album Review: XXX by Danny Brown

Danny Brown is a Detroit rapper with a strangled yap of a voice that you could politely call "distinctive." Depending on the moment, he either resembles a Doberman whose paw has been stepped on or a cross between Jello Biafra and South Park's Terrence & Philip. For a rapper, choosing an abrasive honk like this as your instrument is an audacious move; it all but demands that you come well-equipped with compelling reasons for your listeners to hang on. But Danny Brown is an unusually audacious rapper.

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XXX is a bloated album; 19-track albums are a thing of the early millennium past. But this bloat is a gluttonous glory. Danny Brown is not a retread or nostalgia-pandering schmub. XXX -- named for his gutter-filthy mouth and his 30th birthday -- is an accomplishment. Where else would one correlate ….

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Danny Brown is probably—no, definitely—the most divisive MC to emerge from Detroit’s new millennium hip-hop scene. For the past few years he’s been exercising an elastic, high-pitched vocal delivery that’s very obviously not his natural cadence. It bears similarities to Lil’ Boosie in its strange inflections, Lil’ Wayne in its monster-from-the-closet tone, Kool Keith in its awkward confidence and any number of Internet MCs such as Spaceghostpurpp and Lil’ B in its total disregard for static flow.

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