There’s a great sense of relaxation emanating down the phone line as Danny Brown kicks back at his house in rural Michigan.
After an arduous day and night of cancelled and rescheduled flights from Los Angeles back to Detroit, there’s nothing the rapper is more pleased about than taking the top off a few beers and embracing the quiet nature of home.
“Out here I’m still Daniel – it ain’t really a Danny Brown type of thing,” he says. “I can just walk around and be free when I’m at home, then when I leave, I go to work.”
It seems work has followed him closely. He’s got four more interviews after ours is completed, and is running on little to no sleep, due in part to his unfortunate encounter with the Delta airline the day before, as well as the long studio hours he’s been clocking for a week in LA.
“When you travel as much as I do, something is always bound to go wrong,” he laughs. Asked about the diss track he’s lined up after being caught in an airport all day, he replies: “They’ll get it.”
For the artist otherwise known as Daniel Dewan Sewell, travel is the least of his worries when stacked against the earlier years of his life. His occupation as a rapper and entertainer has seen him elevate to a respected position within the hip hop industry over the last decade, from troubled beginnings as a drug dealer in the suburbs (a pathway that would eventually see him do jail time). His onstage persona – and the majority of his recent music – would also leave many to assume that the man himself is as exciting as he is completely untamed when it comes to performance time.
“I’m like a boxer, about to get ready to fight that day,” he says. “But sometimes, you know, I might drink too much because I’m just so nervous.”
While we chat, it becomes all the more apparent that Brown’s transition into hip hop life has been made easier by the fact he’s distanced himself from the often violent and unruly streets of his hometown to focus on a career.
“It wasn’t really too hard for me because I’ve always been a stay in the house kind of person,” he explains. “Even when I sold drugs, I was in the house most of the time doing that, so when I started making music and a name for myself, I was still kinda outside of the city.
“I was going through a lot of different, new experiences, and now I can openly talk about it all because I’ve lived it.”
When Brown’s debut effort The Hybrid was released in 2010, Detroit’s population was withering away, yet it still had one of the highest murder rates of any major US city. To move through his back catalogue, past 2011’s XXX and his critically acclaimed 2013 album Old, is essentially to take a journey into the mind of this otherwise quiet and surprisingly humble 35-year-old, and to discover the real effects of social injustice.
Every piece of music Brown has put out since returning from prison in 2007 to focus on his craft has been a reflection of his environment. His worldly outlook and raw honesty have continued to win him a global network of fans over the years, and to write him off as being one of the outcasts of the industry for his rock-star-esque mannerisms, skinny jeans and trap music inclinations would be blasphemy – especially given the fact he’s about to release his fourth studio album.
“The concepts on all my albums are pretty much the same,” he confesses. “I talk about my life in every album, and this [next record] is a continuation of that.”
Having taken a three-year hiatus from any solo projects, the rapper has been working away to achieve his next big musical milestone in the form of this new LP. Backed by Fool’s Gold Records – one of New York’s most respected labels – as well as a string of world-class producers and hip hop artists, Brown’s yet-to-be-titled fourth album holds promise as something new and invigorating. His eagerness comes across when he’s questioned on the progress of his long-awaited project.
“XXX and Old was me still just experimenting to find the right sound,” he says. “We’re still mixing it all up.”
Mixing isn’t the same as recording, in the sense that nobody knows how long that will take. But for Brown? “My job is done. I wrote and starred in the movie – now they just gotta edit it.”
Hinting at collaborations with names like The Alchemist and Black Milk, he’s not revealing a whole lot – but there’s a confidence in Brown’s voice, and it’s infectious.
“A lot of times [in the past] I would play around with others’ sounds from my influences and put my own stamp on it,” he says. “Now, this is all Danny Brown shit. Nobody else can do nothing like this.”
Danny Brown performs at Metro Theatre on Tuesday May 3.
