This month's choice wasn't easy. Deciding between Earl Sweatshirt's twisty feature on Danny Brown's "Really Doe," Lil Wayne's candid effort on Solange's "Mad," André 3000's vivid contribution to $ilkmoney's "Decemba," and Danny's cracked verse on "Lost" ruined office relationships. There's a case to be made for each, but I had to go with the Detroit MC.
Danny Brown is one of the few rappers trying to push the genre forward. His latest album Atrocity Exhibition has some of the strangest production anyone has ever used for good old-fashion rapping, with songs at punk rock length. Danny modulates his voice like a LEGO figure swapping heads. One second he's got his tongue out, raising devil horns and inciting mosh pits, and the next he's on a Detroit block giving rappers the business.
On "Lost," over a jazzy loop provided by DJ Playa Haze, he kicks off each verse with filmmaker references and ends each verse with a water-whippin' chorus made for the stove. But the way he opens the first verse in particular—"I’m like Kubrick/With two bricks/And hoes on the strip"—and the reference to Shalamar's Jheri curl juice sealed the deal for me. He snapped.
Do coke with some porn playing in the background and the Isley Brothers coming out the speakers. Live a little. Be somebody, baby.
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