Black & Brown EP
Black Milk and Danny Brown
(Fat Beats)
Much ado has been made of Detroit over the past few years. Most prominently—and perhaps, distortedly—the city’s derelict foundations and wayward expanse have been captured and thrust context-less, as the empty husk of decayed American promise, onto the world. Every mouse-click it takes to re-share an image of desolate beauty subs for an empathetic cluck of the tongue.
Narratives about Detroit’s decline also sometimes refer, at least tangentially, to the deracination of Motown whereby black musical expression gets fetishized to bits by the authenticity-obsessed. These predestined assumptions about poor Motor City miss two things: one, as we are seeing now, this isn’t an isolated phenomenon; two, like in Toronto or San Francisco or any other place where people live and work and feel, music has and continues to thrive.
Danny Brown is one of the year’s break-out rappers. Like a lot of hip-hop that’s come out of the D over the years, Brown isn’t tied to a particular coastal sonic identity, choosing instead to play in his own lane. This is as much due to his flamboyant (by rap standards) exterior—permed, cockatiel coif and skinny jeans—as it is his solidly singular expression. His voice is somewhere between a bark and a squawk, giving his rude-boy punch lines and realist documenting a demented sense of resolve. He’s like that person we all know who hides some heavy shit behind an exhaustively animated faade (and a lot of drugs). The faade pays: you’re likely to find Brown’s Fools Gold-released mixtape XXX on many critics’ year-end lists.
Black & Brown, his new EP with hometown producer/rapper Black Milk, is less a flowery love note to Detroit than a soft-focus “because we can” spotlight on the local economy. It’s also not the year’s first team-up effort (see: Jay-Z/Kanye West, Gucci Mane/Waka Flocka Flame) or Detroit-centric collaboration (Royce da 5’9”/Eminem’s Bad Meets Evil project). Instead, Black & Brown is just an easy flex of might from two of the city’s best: one more established, though less widely known; the other a newish, Pitchfork-approved force.
So the 10-song Black & Brown serves an important bridge and a nice, brief (only 22 minutes!) entry point to both Black Milk and Danny Brown. The producer, almost-always consistent, brings his ability to sample-flip and drum-knock to perilous heights and Brown dins some of his shrillness to match the traditionalist production. The desolate urbanism that dotted XXX isn’t as apparent here; there’s less social realism from Brown and more unquotable quotables in the form of vulgar virility, drug dirges and gracefully calamitous runs of bars. “Wake Up” is just two minutes of Brown snaking raps, sans hooks, through a melismatic field of hypnotic sound. And “LOL” compiles a host of chatspeak into an arch hook, while the song’s structure and funky guitar loop make for a more complete experience than some of the other stuff on here.
Title track “Black & Brown” opens stark and theatrical, then gets roused by a phalanx of drums and a run-on verse from Black Milk. It is punch-a-hole-in-the-wall riotous and the best song on the album. But mostly, like on the mystic pursuit of “Zap,” an amicable competitive streak emerges between the two on Black & Brown, with Black Milk’s compositional prowess and thwacky drums redirecting from Brown’s razor-sharp raps. Probably this isn’t the best technique, but for a loose, partner-project showpiece from two boys from the D, it’s a totally thrilling listen.
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Anupa Mistry writes regularly on music for Toronto Standard.
