“This rap shit executed saved my life and fucked it up on the identical time.” That’s the sort of perception {that a} rapper, or perhaps a fan, may attain after months of intensive remedy. It’s additionally the very very first thing that Danny Brown says on his new album. Should you’ve been listening to Danny Brown for the final decade-plus, then the assertion isn’t precisely a shock. Brown has all the time made music about trauma, partying, and the futile scramble to course of trauma by way of partying. But it surely’s particularly intense to listen to him lay all of it like that on the very prime of Quaranta, the XXX sequel that he’s been promising for ceaselessly. That first line is the thesis assertion. Every little thing that follows is the proof.

It’s truly been greater than 10 years since Danny Brown launched XXX, the album that made him right into a sort of web star. Earlier than then, Brown was a regional Detroit rap phenom, recognized for his electric-shock yelp and his unconventional fashion. XXX got here out when Brown was turning 30, and its title was an allusion to his age and his appetites — Xanax, intercourse, no matter else you is likely to be providing him. Brown made his nationwide breakthrough when he was already a fully-grown grownup, however that didn’t essentially make issues simpler for him. Within the years that adopted, Brown turned a party-starting highway canine, rapping lyrics in regards to the abject squalor of his youth over dance beats that may’ve gone over the heads of tons of the children in his viewers. This wasn’t precisely a recipe for a easy, seamless transition into center age.

Should you hearken to the final 5 Danny Brown albums in sequence, it feels like an absolute mannequin of sleek growing old inside rap. Brown has progressively moved away from the frantic yelp of his youthful years, sinking into denser instrumentals and making connections with rap legends and elders with out dropping his adventurous edge. He’s by no means made a nasty file, or perhaps a mediocre one. Listening to Quaranta, although, it’s clear that Brown isn’t pleased with the place he’s on the planet. He’s depressed, lonely, freaked out at his personal self-destructive tendencies, and nervous that his profession is grinding to a halt. To listen to him inform it, that was the place Brown was when he recorded Quaranta. He’s doing higher now, so Quaranta appears like a time-capsule portrait of an important rapper teetering on the sting of oblivion.

In line with a latest Guardian profile, Danny Brown hit backside, checked into rehab, and received clear earlier this yr — all after ending work on Quaranta. Actually, the album has been executed, totally locked, for practically three years. The album was initially speculated to be referred to as XXXX — the phrase Quaranta is Italian for Forty — and Brown is now 42. Earlier this yr, he accused his label and his supervisor of holding again the file’s launch: “They try this to attempt to make you go broke. After which you are able to do no matter they need you to do at that time.”

To listen to him inform it, the label was mad that he and JPEGMAFIA had made Scaring The Hoes, the joint album that they launched earlier this yr. They completed that album after Brown completed work on Quaranta, and Brown says that he was in a good darker place when engaged on Scaring The Hoes: “After we have been making it, it was actually exhausting to work with me. I used to be at my drunkest at the moment… I might like to make one other album, however I might perceive if he by no means wished to work with me once more.” Engaged on these two data, Brown says that he wasn’t particularly involved along with his personal survival: “A lot fentanyl was going round on the time, so that you have been risking it each time you bought a bag. So I used to be making it with that in my head, too, like: ‘Possibly this is likely to be my final album’ kinda shit, ?” (When Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA toured collectively this previous summer time, Brown was reportedly sober.)

Danny Brown has been an important rapper for a really very long time, and if you take a look at his 2023 from a distance — two vastly completely different data popping out in the identical 12 months — it appears to be like like a profession yr. Scaring The Hoes was charged-up and dizzy, whereas Quaranta is heavy and introspective, however they each have totally realized sounds and kinds. It’s extraordinarily uncommon for a rapper in his forties to nonetheless have that sort of juice — particularly when he’s years faraway from his viral breakout and he when by no means actually discovered mainstream fame. Brown’s endurance ought to be a trigger for celebration. He ought to be proud. On Quaranta, he doesn’t sound proud.

On the brand new album’s title observe, Brown is wracked with doubt, asking himself exhausting questions: “Have a look at you: 40, nonetheless doing all of your shit/ While you gon’ cease? When God gon’ make you give up?” In a while, he talks about rap prefer it’s a dead-end job: “In all probability by no means win a Grammy or chart on the charts/ Ought to I nonetheless preserve going or name it a day? All night time, thinkin’ ‘bout the errors I made.” The hook of that music, “Hanami,” is about Brown feeling grateful that he’s survived some tough instances, however he nonetheless sounds caught on his personal fuckups.

A kind of fuckups is a relationship that ended badly. When he displays on that, he quotes one of many Scarface verses from the Geto Boys’ “My Thoughts Enjoying Tips On Me.” Elsewhere, when he freaks out in regards to the gentrification of Detroit — “White people coming out the blue/ They executed tore that down and made it right into a Entire Meals/ Landlord in search of a payday/ Now its rented scooters the place we use to slang yay” — he does it by quoting and sampling Goodie Mob’s “Cell Remedy.” This rap shit is Danny Brown’s native tongue. It’s how he processes the world.

As a pure rap file, Quaranta is masterful. Even when he’s at his lowest, Danny Brown stays a magnetic presence. His wordplay sings: “I used to promote a bit/ However i don’t fuck round no extra, I’m celibate.” His storytelling stays vivid, particularly relating to what he calls his “trauma-dump” flashbacks to his childhood: “Late night time within the kitchen, hear ’em all the time fussing/ Obtained my ass beat, I ain’t even do nothing/ Seen her crying within the kitchen, and I don’t know why/ Caught my aunt smokin’ crack, and she or he received a black eye.”

Danny Brown’s unimaginable ear for music is as sharp as ever. The beats on Quaranta come from numerous completely different producers — the Alchemist, Quelle Chris, previous collaborator Paul White, jazz drummer and guest-rapper Kassa General. However these tracks all work collectively as a cohesive entire. They’re stuffed with echoes, off-time lopes, and ambient discordance — a musical equal to the murky haze the place Danny Brown’s head apparently was whereas he was making the album. Brown raps over most of it in his lower-register grumble — the voice that he makes use of when he’s speaking about his hardest instances. The frayed yap of his older data is generally gone right here. He tends to make use of the latter voice to speak about enjoyable. Right here, he’s not having enjoyable.

Quaranta isn’t an extended album, however it’s expansive sufficient to get misplaced in. Danny Brown has a uncommon reward for translating his ache into music that’s not remotely punishing — music that may make for a deep headphones expertise even if you’re not processing the phrases. That reward has in all probability sophisticated his life in methods each predictable and never. The profile in The Guardian exhibits a Danny Brown who’s getting his shit collectively — residing within the Austin suburbs, reconnecting along with his love of performing, doting on his pet chihuahuas. He’s been although it, and he’s turned that have into one other endlessly compelling piece of music. Possibly the rap life hasn’t all the time been good to Danny Brown, however rap is healthier when he’s nonetheless making data like this.

Quaranta is out 11/17 on Warp.