Danny Brown always seemed to know how his story was going to play out. Years ago, the Detroit talent had already beaten the odds, trading a life dealing drugs for one rapping about them, but after spending his 20s releasing mixtapes, he felt the clock ticking on his chance to find success in the music business.
On his second album, “XXX,” released when he was 30 years old, Brown rapped about numbing his soul — “Poppin’ pills, writin’, drinkin’ and smokin’ haze” — and how recreational revelry was taking a grim toll: “Turning to these drugs, now these drugs turned my life, and it’s the downward spiral, got me suicidal, but too scared to do it, so these pills’ll be the rifle.”
“XXX” was a creative breakthrough and arrived as the worlds of hip-hop and electronic dance music began to collide — perfect timing for a rapper with an ear for manic beats and an appetite for party drugs. But even as he saw his profile rise and accolades accumulate, Brown was still rapping about the downward spiral and how he had missed out on enjoying his success by being high the whole time. The title of his 2016 album, “Atrocity Exhibition,” spoke to what his life had become.
“Everybody loves to watch a train wreck, but it wasn’t good for my mental health,” he says of being an addict in public, during a phone interview with The Washington Post. But after going to rehab and getting sober last year, Brown is back on track. “It was a good ending to the movie. Now it’s time to start another chapter.”
His latest album, last year’s “Quaranta,” finds Brown in an introspective mode, wondering what it means to be rapping in his 40s and bookending the journey that began on “XXX.” Rap saved his life and brought him to the brink as well, but throughout “Quaranta,” it’s clear he can’t stop, won’t stop rapping.
Brown — a self-described “cyborg with vocal cords” and a “matador of metaphor” — still brings it on the mic, his gift for a memorable line (“Got a Mexican homie named Chinese Mike”) or evocative detail (“Let me change the channel with the pliers”) still intact. But after having drugs and rap intertwined for so long, Brown had been concerned about what being sober would mean for his art.
“You’re always worried about that, but I’ve come to realize that it’s just really who I am. It’s just really in me,” he says of rapping. “If anything, [substance abuse] was hindering me more than helping. Now I’m at that point where I’m having fun with it again.”
March 15 at 8 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. thehowardtheatre.com. $27.50-$49.50.
