Atrocity Exhibition

by Danny Brown

Overview

Danny Brown's first Warp release is named after a Joy Division song inspired by writer J.G. Ballard's collection of the same title. "Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown," one of the chapters in the Ballard book, would have been just as apt an inscription on an album that looks more like a mid-'80s 12" designed by Neville Brody than anything classified as hip-hop. Old comrade Paul White produces two-thirds of the tracks, lending gnarled, sometimes clanging and blasting rhythms that complement Brown's elevated levels of dread and anxiety and slightly reduced amount of vulgar mischief. Brown spends most of his time looking darkly inward. In that berserk yet lucid high pitch, he raps about being more desperate to score than his clients: "Slice your tomato if you owe us for the lettuce/Runnin' through the D sorta like Jerome Bettis." He depicts himself as a vice-addled, teeth-grinding paranoiac with no soul or hope, and that summarizes only the first three cuts. The outward-looking material is just as biting. In "Today," the track that most exemplifies the album's title, Brown pithily specifies observed struggles and atrocities -- hustling to pay for diapers, the dodging of bullets from murderous civilians and authority, the prison-industrial complex -- as he references OutKast. No such dread is in "Dance in the Water," the album's only true break from the hellscapes. Over the brawling tribal Pulsallama rhythm that it takes to dance to what he has to live through, Brown paraphrases Parliament's "Aqua Boogie" as he outlines a new workout plan -- minus a proposition, one technically clean enough to be applied by youngsters. Guest appearances are kept to a judicious few. Kendrick Lamar provides a verse and the hook on "Really Doe," a knocking Black Milk production that also features Ab-Soul and Earl Sweatshirt. Brown's meeting with Cypress Hill's B-Real is expectedly pinched and faded. Most symbiotic is "From the Ground Up," decaying funk with Kelela in dreamlike Janet Jackson mode. Even with its outside input, Atrocity Exhibition is Danny Brown at his least diluted, almost unrelentingly grim and completely engrossing. ~ Andy Kellman

Product Details

Release Date:	09/30/2016
Label:	Warp
UPC:	0801061827625

Tracks

1. Downward Spiral
2. Tell Me What I Don't Know
3. Rolling Stone
4. Really Doe
5. Lost
6. Ain't It Funny
7. Golddust
8. White Lines
9. Pneumonia
10. Dance in the Water
11. From the Ground
12. When It Rain
13. Today
14. Get Hi
15. Hell for It

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Danny Brown   Primary Artist
Petite Noir   Primary Artist,Vocals,Featured Artist
Kelela   Primary Artist,Vocals,Featured Artist
Kendrick Lamar   Primary Artist,Featured Artist
Ab-Soul   Primary Artist,Featured Artist
Earl Sweatshirt   Primary Artist,Featured Artist
B-Real   Primary Artist,Featured Artist

Technical Credits

Kim Davis   Composer
Mani Neumeier   Composer
The Alchemist   Producer
Black Milk   Producer
Wendy Wild   Composer
Tatsuya Sato   Mastering,Mastering Engineer
Ande Whyland   Composer
Beau Thomas   Cut
Delia Derbyshire   Composer
Giovanni Cristiani   Composer
Timothy Saccenti   Photography
Paul White   Composer,Producer
Chen Ge Xin   Composer
Curtis Cross   Composer
Derek "MixedByAli" Ali   Mixing,Mixing Engineer
Kelela Mizanekristos   Composer
Kendrick Lamar   Composer
DJ Playa Haze   Producer
Brendon Harding   Engineer
Evian Christ   Producer
Thebe Kgositsile   Composer
Daniel Sewell   Composer
Dany Johnson   Composer
Petite Noir   Producer
Yannick Ilunga   Composer
Alan Maman   Composer
Herbert Anthony Stevens IV   Composer
Joshua Leary   Composer
Justin "J.U.S" Gaines   Engineer
Brain Dead   Design
Deven Welch   Composer
Min Sanchez   Composer
Alex Genrich   Composer
April Palmer   Composer
Jean Leider   Composer
Lori Montana   Composer
Stacey Elkin   Composer
Tao Qin   Composer
Uli Trepte   Composer
Dave Greenslade   Composer
Ann Magnuson   Composer
Raz Mesinai   Composer
Louis Freese   Composer
Ulrich Trepte   Composer
Kevin Godley   Composer
Lol Creme   Composer