You're listening to song-explorter from musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, her way. This episode contains explicit language. Danny Brown started his career in 2007 by handing out mixtapes in Detroit where he's from.
In 2011, he put out his acclaimed second album, Triple X. Since then, he's collaborated with rappers like Kendrick Lamar, Asap Rocky, and Jay Pike Mafia, but he's also worked with electronic bands like Purity Ring and The Avalanche's, and he did a verse on a remix for corn. When I first heard him around when Triple X came out, I was really drawn to his voice, and I also appreciated that, given how young so many artists are now when they get really famous, Danny Brown's career really started taking off in his 30s. He put out his sixth album, Quaranta, in 2023, and for this episode, I talked to him about one of the songs from that album, called YBP, which features guest vocals from Bruiser Wolf.
My name's Danny Brown. When I created this song, I was in Detroit. I was really in a dark time of my life. I just went through a real bad breakup, I was living in a house in suburbs, and so I decided to move downtown.
Because it was lively down here. It was just a lot of new restaurants, new nightclubs, I would move down here with the intentions I'm partying, and being single, you know, in the quarantine and pandemic and everything happened. So everything was just shut down. So now I'm in this penthouse apartment by myself and just lonely, and I was just drinking a lot, and I figured the best way for me to get myself out of this funk was just to work it out.
Start by creating music again. So when I started on this album, it was just really getting my feelings out. So my friend Scott Walker, I just told him, he needs some beats, you know, he's seeing what he got. And then he gave me the beat for his song.
I really love a good shot. Like somebody can chop up a good sample and he's like, oh man, and he gave me like a happy feeling. I kind of like to make music with my heart and not my brain and I really think too much about it and just do it to make me feel, and with this song, the feeling was like I was back in Detroit and I always want to tell those stories of where I came from. I really like to wake up first thing in the morning because I was like smoking a lot of weed in and drinking a lot.
So, you know, waking up fresh, just get a cup of coffee, cut on some beats, see what happened, and I just wrote like one verse to it. Let me change the channel with the pliers, wet clothes on the porch, we ain't have a dry, spin the boot stamps, wait till you leave the stove, too many in the beer, head of sleep on the floor. When we changed the channel with the pliers, back in those days, we always had like a good TV downstairs, then the TV in my bedroom would always be some old, raggedy television, it had like knobs, and after you used the knobs for so long, sometime it'll break off. So then you got to turn the actual knob with the pliers, you know, the pliers will be always right by the TV.
And the good thing about living in Detroit was that we so close to Canada, we would all get the Canadian stations. And I'd be always up at night, I would watch a lot of Mr. Bean, Mr. Bean and like kids in the hall, if you lose the pliers you're stuck on that channel, you just got to watch hockey now.
You're like, oh man, we watching hockey tonight, I guess. My favorite line in the song, I was writing it in a penthouse apartment, but I had a line where I say, it's been a fool stamps way till you leave the stove. My mom would give us food stamps or something, and then we'd go to school and all the kids would be spending real money, and if they see you spending food stamps, they'd like joke on you in school and stuff. So I would always have to wait around in the store and wait till everybody else bought their stuff and leave all the stuff and sneak and stuff.
So I was like, I was spending food stamps, but I'll wait till you leave the stove. I didn't even know it was poor. I would say my parents did a great job of taking care of me, but also growing up in Detroit, it's always somebody doing worse than you. So we was poor, but I didn't ever feel that way because I always knew it was kids in my neighborhood that was doing worse.
It would be like kids knocking on your door asking for sugar or do you got some bread so we could make some sandwiches. I was never one of those kids, you know. My mom always made sure we ate good every night, but she had four kids, and my parents had me real young. My dad was 16, my mom was 18, and I look at my dad all the time, are you crazy, man?
You were 21 years old with four kids, like, what was your life, man? You know? I definitely wasn't mature enough. I'm pretty sure he wasn't.
So that's why I say kids, raising kids. And we all are trying to be grown. Kids raising kids are trying to be grown. Things never fix when we come from broken homes.
I'm not that good at hooks. I'm cool enough to admit that the hooks are like my weakest in my writing game, but working with Jay Beck Mafia on the last album, he kind of taught me a way to get around that, and he's just like, just write the longest verse as possible, and eventually a hook, a present itself in that long verse, that then you can edit the rest of the stuff around and make a verse out of all that stuff. We was young, black, and poor, being raised in Detroit. You can never learn when you've been taught.
What's pretty much just saying, like, all the stuff that I've been through is what made me who I am today, and everything that I learned, you can't teach that. You just have to experience it. When I create these songs with just like simple loops like that, it's almost just like me with like an acoustic guitar. And then once I get them to like a executive producer or something like that, they bring the full band in and bring everything into it.
There's like a moment in the... Let me play this. Okay. So like the drums change here?
And it gets real? 80s? Yeah. That was really cost overall, who's my label mate, who I really consider to be like the MVP by this album, because he took a lot of my ideas and took them to places that I couldn't have did on my own, you know?
And I'm glad he was able to pull that out of it. We were talking about my childhood and stuff, and he was able to like just tap into that, and he gave it that feeling, man, and it's so dope. The newest guy on our crew is Bruiser Woof. When I first heard him rap, it was just like a breath of fresh air for me, you know?
I wanted to get him on his song and he actually like the next day wrote a verse. It was a dope verse, but you know, I think he was just trying to be cool and just say some dope stuff. And I was like, nah, man, I want you to tap in more, man. You got to reach into your soul, man, like just talk to the city, let him know where we come from.
What was his reaction to that when you gave him that direction? I don't think he was too happy, to be honest, because I know he worked on that verse, and he just knew it was dope. He was dope, but he just didn't work with his song. But when he did redo it, and when we played it back, he was like, man, he was right.
And he just had so many Detroit references in that verse, like a lot of people in the outside world probably wouldn't get half the stuff he's saying, like, and lay me in like a lot of our sports heroes that we grew up watching Rodney Pete who played for the Lions and Barry Sanders, you know? Run, run like Barry, shoot, like Zeke, but in a hood with an eye on me, like Rodney Pete. I'm going to say the most town, the fat fat fat, police violence, that's how I'm I was saying that. Talking about Malice Green, which was a guy that got beat by the police and they murdered him.
They happened like back in the day. And that was like a big deal in Detroit. And one of my favorite lines on this album is from him on that song, which was, Act Some Why, B.I. Like Bush Jones.
There better be us when they grown up, but Act Some Why, B.I. Like Bush Jones. And Bush Jones was a leader of a gang in the 80s of Detroit called YVI, which stands for Young Boys Incorporated. And he was like a leader of all these young kids, you know, that was doing wrong.
But in that line, he said, they want to be us when they're grown, but Act Some Why, B.I. And it's like that double entendre. Why B.I.? Because he's going to be me if I ain't doing nothing right for the community.
I feel like his other verse where he was trying to relate more to the people on the outside world this time, he just talked to the people in the city. My city show, No Love, is hard to fit in them or to mitten, like OJ Love. This album set around for some years. And then when we were gearing up, starting to like get in the final product, my manager dart, he, I hit me up and he's like, man, I booked you some studio time.
And I think you need to put one more verse on it. Just tie it all up. And I was like, man, I don't feel like even because what made it so hard, I was just struggling with addiction at that time. And I was just looking at my career.
It was almost at a point. I was like, I don't even want to do this no more. I was just like, I hate this. But he made me do it.
So I went and recorded in Austin, I just ended up getting super drunk, went to the studio. It wasn't a good day to be honest. It really wasn't a good day. But I sent him a song and he was like, yeah, that's just what I needed.
So I was like, I did my job, you know? Stuffed in the middle between Blay and Dilla. So I'm going to see the big picture from my bird's eye if you ain't had no clue. Didn't know what was true.
Had nothing to lose. You know, I say stuck in the middle between Blay and Dilla. Blay nice was like a street rapper in Detroit. And of course everybody knows Jay Dilla.
And I always felt like I was just in the middle of that. Like I wasn't always like the more traditional hip hop style and then the street rappers who, you know, pretty much just drug dealers that rap in a free time. You know, I always felt like I was in the middle of that because I wasn't necessarily accepted by either crowd, but I was able to play in both arenas. I just feel like a nomad in some sense, you know, coming up early days.
You know, I was pretty much just like everybody else that starts out. I didn't have a voice yet. I would go to New York all the time and, you know, I was trying to get a record deal and stuff. So they were trying to like make me like rap or stuff like that.
And of course I was doing it because I wanted to get a record deal. But at the end of the day that wasn't me. So I was like, I need to go back home and make a name for myself first. And then when I went back, I started to rap over that more Dilla S stuff.
Because then I looked at it like, that's our sound. I'm from Detroit. That's what I need to be doing. I need to be making that kind of music.
And so I didn't find this Danny Brown voice until 30, to be honest. But I feel like I just got caught up and put a lot of artists probably get caught up in. You know, we create these personas for ourselves. You know, what rap is almost like creating this character that's bigger than life.
You know, you're always going to over glorify your lifestyle or, you know, try to make yourself like this big superhero kind of character. And in the midst of that, I stopped being Daniel and started being Danny Brown. And Danny Brown wasn't happy. It wasn't a healthy lifestyle that anyone should be living.
But thank God, you know, if it's able to get some help and you know, going to rehab and stuff. And you realize that you deal with a lot of underlying trauma. You realize why you do it in the first place. It starts out fun and, you know, hanging with your friends and just having a good time.
But it still stems from something else deeper and darker that you're trying to escape from, you know. I have a sense of who this owner is for. And that's for like, any kid right now is going through that same thing. But then they can listen to somebody just like, look, he been through this.
Look, we're here today. And for my childhood cell too. And just for me to just kind of remind myself to where I came from and where I met right now in my life. Like, man, you bless.
You did it. The thing that you want to do as a childhood kid, when you would tell your teachers, like, I want to be a rapper and the whole class I laugh at you, you know. But you did it. Like, you should be proud of yourself.
I was never was able to pat myself on the back and be like, be happy for where you came, you know. Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas and elements came together in the final song. And now, here's YBP by Danny Brown featuring Bruiser Wolf in its entirety. You'll find links to buy or stream YBP and can watch the music video.
If you liked this episode, you might also like the episode with Meek Mill from 2019. You'll find that and all the other episodes of the show at songexploder.net. This episode was produced by Craig Ili, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself. Special thanks to Chris Goodwin.
The episode artwork is by Carlos Snerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radio Topia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about all our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on social media at Rishi Herway, and you can follow the show at songexploder.
You can also get a songexploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Case Herway. Thanks for listening.