It’s been four years since Danny Brown released a solo album (2019’s U Know What I’m Sayin?), but the Detroit native is officially back in action with the release of album number six, Quaranta.
Arriving as both the spiritual bookend to his breakout album XXX and a meditative follow-up to this year’s chaotic collaborative album SCARING THE HOES with JPEGMAFIA, Quaranta offers new insight into the inner monologues of an artist who’s mystified fans for over a decade.
Now sober, Brown shares a more pensive, calculated and subdued version of himself with a personal and autobiographical project that was penned during the COVID-19 lockdown while he was holed by himself in downtown Detroit.
From Rolling Stone:
He wrote most of Quaranta at the Bruiser Brigade house in Detroit, where Brown and the artists signed to the label he founded would stay and work on their own projects all day. It was a rough time for Brown: He was going through a bad breakup, and he’d moved to rapidly gentrifying downtown Detroit just as the pandemic set in. “I’m stuck in this fucking penthouse apartment,” he says. “Can’t even have guests over. The security at the door. I’m in there by myself, depressed, doing fucking coke and getting drunk every night by myself.”
At the same time, he was facing financial pressure due to shows getting canceled, including a booked European tour. “I literally was going broke,” he says. “All my savings went bad. My credit card was over. But I was putting it on myself, too. I was doing drugs still. Before I know it, I just sniffed up my house, and I’ve got no money coming in.”
“It’s almost like that was my way of just getting shit out,” he says. “I was so fucking caught up in ‘Am I going to live tomorrow?’ It was almost like, if I died, this is what I have to say. That’s where I was at with it. This is all my shit.”
Equipped with 11 songs, including “Jenn’s Terrific Vacation” and the Alchemist-laced “Tantor,” the album boasts contributions from SKYWLKR, Quelle Chris, Paul White, and the Bruiser Brigade crew.
Press play and be sure to add Quaranta wherever you get music.
