Danny Brown

Rapper (n): a person who performs rap music or speaks the words of a rap song.

Let’s put aside the fact that this is the most awkward definition of a rapper I can possibly fathom (the implications of the ‘or’ are particularly intriguing), and see if it’s at all applicable Danny Brown.

Whatever reactions you might have to Danny Brown’s polarising delivery, you’d be hard pressed to call it speaking. Brown forces his lines out of his mouth with all the sonic nuance of a blender spitting out shards of broken glass, and his tracks certainly play fast and loose with the terms ‘rap music’ and ‘rap songs’. Throughout his latest LP – the aptly named Atrocity Exhibition – Brown’s protean flow wraps itself around a multitude of warped beats, from the haunted dark-cabaret fragments of Lost to the unnerving Nick Mason samples of Ain’t It Funny.  As Brown himself puts it, “I can rap over two pots scraping together”.

It doesn’t really matter whether Brown adheres to whatever the definition of a rapper should be. Whatever he does, he does it extremely well. Head up to Marble Factory and see for yourself. Here’s hoping he brings more than a couple of pots with him.