Quaranta

Danny Brown

Danny Brown's Quaranta, forty in Italian, serves as a career and life retrospective in the eleven years since Brown's breakout mixtape XXX. The eleven-track, thirty-four minute album covers a number of topics like the physical, emotional, and social tolls of a heavy rock star lifestyle, the conflicted feelings that come with a career in a creative field, as well as personal and observational musings on the black and poor experience. The general tone of this record is a little more serious and somber than your typical Brown project, but he still manages to deliver a handful of debauched bars and eyebrow raising one-liners. As far as the production goes, Quaranta continues to demonstrate Brown's incredible taste in instrumentals. The usual suspects are here as Paul White, Skywlkr, and Quelle Chris all have production credits. The Alchemist and Brown team up once again for a track, and we are also met with some relatively unfamiliar faces that come through with some stellar instrumentals of their own.

The first half of Quaranta wound up being fairly strong. The title track is a pretty cold introduction where Brown wrestles with feelings of personal stagnation. He assesses the scales; acknowledging the positive change of minds and hearts that have resulted in him sharing his cautionary tales, but also confessing that his career path has prevented him from processing personal trauma; thus keeping him locked into a cycle of destructive behaviour. The instrumental feels like it's pulled straight out of a patient, Quentin Tarantino film scene with its clean tremolo-picked guitars and dramatic bass slides. From there, we get The Alchemist-produced lead single Tantor, whose sample is lifted from a late 70s prog-rock track. Brown returns with his trademark helium-filled, cartoon character inflection, dropping some of the most memorable lines of the entire project. He repeats the final couplet "this that Black Lives Matter, still sniff cocaine, paid for a therapist but I still ain't change" which further illustrates the disconnect between Brown's morals and actions.

Quaranta keeps hitting with Ain't My Concern, which boasts what I think is the album's most poignant hook. In its single, elongated verse, Brown goes after limited shelf-life rappers that try to make it big by catching a trend. Compare this to Brown's career trajectory and you can easily see how this is a point of pride for the truly singular and authentic Brown; a rapper with just over twenty years of experience need I remind you. I love the ominous instrumental with all the sampled horn one-shots that accent the percussion. Dark Sword Angel, produced by Quelle Chris and Chris Keys has perhaps my favourite instrumental of the bunch. The drums hit hard and the combination of distorted guitar and twangy organ collectively create a very appealing sound for those melodic runs. Brown delivers one fiery bar after another, and there's no hook necessary when there's hilarious 'steal-yo-bitch' bars about using a man's woman like a rotary phone to the point she'll never call their man again. Getting to the album's centrepiece, we have Jenn's Terrific Vacation. If you repeat the title in rapid succession, it phonetically morphs into 'gentrification,' which is exactly the practice Brown examines on this highly percussive and eerie track. I wouldn't say the observations are incredibly novel, but as someone who has developed pretty staunch views towards landlords, 'beautification' projects, and their effects on the cost of housing over the last few years, I deeply sympathize with the frustrations Brown is expressing in this song.

Beyond this point, I feel like the album begins to dip in quality a little. The instrumentals may not feel as daring or subversive as we'd typically expect from Brown, but more so, I'm less impressed with the hooks. On Down Wit It, he laments a tarnished relationship, one that Brown deeply regrets disrespecting. The hook, I'll admit, lays Brown's heart bare, but I can't help but feel like more effort should have been exerted to poetically express how he feels about the situation. The hooks on Celibate and Hanami are fairly cumbersome; employing repetition, alliteration, and homophones beyond what I think is acceptable in creating a catchy refrain. Also, to clarify my position a little more, I don't think the instrumentals are particularly bad. Instead, I feel like the last half of the record stays in this very low-key setting. My brain receives little stimulation, and therefore, I begin to tune out. If Brown could have wedged in another hype track somewhere in that back half, I think it could greatly improve the flow of the record.

Quaranta feels like the conclusion to a long and harrowing chapter in Danny Brown's life, and it is uncertain where he will go next. Across this record, Brown is not shy to admit how the rap rat race has kept him in a proverbial stranglehold; I would totally understand if he decided to hang things up after this record. On the other hand though, the recently sober rapper has expressed a new found love and appreciation for his craft. So here in lies a pretty interesting crossroads for the sharp rapper. I personally would like to see Brown take things in a new direction. In the years since XXX, he has displayed immense versatility, so I'm confident that Brown could do literally anything at this point, and still come out with a compelling record.