This can be a comeback story: a former “junkie, alcoholic” who misplaced management, now recovered and reborn, embracing the bliss and identity-making potential of music like by no means earlier than. It’s a traditional hip-hop underdog narrative, and that is very a lot a rap album, simply adorned with a Splice pack’s value of pixie-lated mud. Rave music is usually related to druggy abandon, however for Brown it appears extra concerning the heady rush of pleasure conjured by whizzing tempos and neon synths. In “Guide of Daniel,” the primary of two Quadeca collabs, he places himself on rap’s Rushmore (alongside Kendrick and Earl) and shits on clickbait rappers, all whereas describing how he survived the times of “ingesting until [I] handed out” and urging you to be your truest self. “Fuck punching in, I’mma write til my wrist breaks,” he declares. “Don’t have a care on this world/About what anyone thinks.. When the fats girl sings/Simply know you lived your goals.”
It’s apparent that rap’s perennial eccentric would discover kinship with the brand new vanguard of outsiders, corroding pop with Skrillex frag-bombs and all-out howls. These buddies crowd round Brown at each crazed nook: Digicore darling 8485 throws a heavenly halo over the trance-rap minimize “Flowers”; Texas oddball JOHNNASCUS yells ferociously over the apocalyptic “1999.” Brown will get unexpectedly poignant on “What You See,” which begins like a Vanisher bonus minimize earlier than he confesses how he was a power-abusing horndog. “I used to be at your daughters’/Doing something that I can/Simply to attempt to get they bra off/I’m sorry Ms. Jackson,” he raps as Quadeca cries like a wounded sprite, or perhaps Brown’s pained conscience.
Whereas technically an idea album—Frost Childen’s Angel Prost scatters poetry narration all through, and Brown performs a personality seemingly modeled on himself named… Dusty Star—Stardust sounds higher as a choose-your-own-rave texture-taster. He strikes a neat steadiness between hooky and whacked-out bizarre on spotlight “Child,” which got here from Brown linking up with underscores and taking part in her Dizzee Rascal’s “I Luv U”; the grime GOAT is considered one of his large influences. You nearly want the oozy minimalism of the bubblegum bass sections between each verse by no means coheres right into a full-on beat with pointless litter. The freak-streak crosses over into “Regardless of the Case,” which feels like producer Holly rewired a “goofy ahh” TikTok beat for a ballistic WarioWare minigame. Brown’s zigzagging pogo stream works finest on this mad-lab mode the place it’s not simply rap plus hyperpop—that’s the case on the title observe, whose grating helium-squirrel synths siren feels custom-made to filter delicate listeners—or Danny Brown plus the key sauce of his chosen collaborator. It has the damaged wonkiness of an “OPM BABI,” one thing any sane particular person can be scared to rap over.
