33 Danny Brown: Stardust

There are few artists as unduly unappreciated, with a back catalogue that’s so ridiculously unappreciated for its consistent experimentation, than Mr Daniel Dewan Sewell. Better known as… yeah, OK, you probably got that…

His career has been pretty spectacular, even simply going off his entries onto Necessary Evil. 2011’s ‘XXX’ was an intensely arresting bloc party that wittily both celebrated immense substance abuse while nudging the person beside it and joking with a wink “Lol, we’ll be regretting this in the morning! And for the rest of our lives! YOLO!!” It was 2011, ‘YOLO’ was still a thing, don’t blame Danny Brown for that. His hair happened to be on fleek at the time. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. 2016’s ‘Atrocity Exhibition‘, though, delved deeper into the morning afters and came up gasping for air with one of the greatest albums in Necessary Evil’s history (that was unlucky enough to be released in the greatest year in Necessary Evil’s history so didn’t even make the top 5). An absolutely jaw-dropping achievement, incredibly evocative yet bumping music set to perhaps the funniest yet darkly poignant lyrics exposing the slow suicide of substance abuse since peak Shaun Ryder…

OK, completely unrelated side note: if an aging artist whose work you hold in the highest regard ever asks to stay at your house “for a night or two”, just… just don’t agree straight away, OK? It’s, erm, actually surprisingly easy for you to be officially recognised as their legal carer and… It’s a lot, OK? Just bear that in mind.

Where was I?

Ah, yes: 2023’s ‘Quantra’ was as astonishingly effective piece of soul searching following the artist’s 40th birthday, which I would personally rank far higher than Jay-Zed’s ‘4:44‘, a far more widely lauded (though far less relatable) example of an aging rapper covering similar topics. The reason that 2019’s ‘uknowhatimsayin¿’ didn’t quite resonate with me as much as the rest of Brown’s discography is that it’s, like, just a fantastic rap album. Anyone can do that!

Well, I’m not sure anyone else could do ‘Stardust’.

Taking a flight to rehab in 2023, taking one last swig of drink, Brown had decided that this dumb music making game was over for him now. Whether he appreciated that he would already be leaving behind one of the greatest ever back catalogues in hip-hop history is unclear, but he was at a point where he had concluded that his creative juices had been fully drained and now he could just spend the rest of his life concentrating on being clean.

During Brown'[s eight week stay in rehab, he would be allowed to use his phone for 30 minutes a day. Personally, I would spend half an hour each day finding as many wrestling memes as possible on Twitter to send to my friends, but Brown would use this time in far more perverse ways: They would listen to 100 gecs. Every day. For eight weeks. Concluding – and I quote – “This shit is fire!”. ‘Stardust’ is the scientific study on what that does to a adult male’s brain.

And it’s pretty spectacular. Drafting in (deep breath) Quadeca, underscores, JOHNNASCUS, 8485, femtanyl, ISSBROKE and other young hyperpop and extreme electronic artists who struggle with grammatical naming conventions, ‘Stardust’ is another example of Brown crafting completely unique hip-hop like absolutely nobody else.

Listen, I’m almost as old as Danny Brown, and I find a lot of these artists…

…

…

…absolutely fucking unlistenable. I honestly really tried with that Jane Remover album this year, assuming that it begins to sound less like a screaming toddler falling onto a synthesizer on, like, the fiftieth listen or something. But eventually I even had to delete it from my library just in case the shuffle happened to subject my precious ears to an surprising and unwarranted massacre. It’s trash, I’m sorry. However, if you disagree and you are under the age of 25 I will concede that you understand more than me. I guess this is just what your poor head sounds like having being forced to grow up alongside social media.

However, as a fellow unc*, Danny understands this barrier, and is able to craft these other artist’s ingenuity** into far more… listenable… and… erm… good… songs. This album is perfect for people like me: I can play this in front of my other old cunt friends and they will think “Wow, Alex is into some really extreme stuff!”, because the most extreme music they’ve ever heard is KoЯn’s ‘Follow the Leader’. What they don’t know is that it’s all crafted by an even older cunt to make actually extreme young artists far more palatable to similarly old cunts! Thanks, Danny!

(*Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I will never use that term again. I think it’s been bastardised so much in 2025 that it now feels racist to say

**I guess maybe genius? At something? Again, if you’re under 25 then you’re the authority here, please don’t Chris Chan me, or whatever it is you people do. Skibbidi-Roblox! See? I’m cool. I’m with it)

The first track echoes ‘Quaranta’s more muted and self-examining perspective, until the album fucking launches off! Loosely a concept album concerning a 90s era pop star called ‘Dusty Star’, but I suspect that’s more an excuse for Danny Brown to dye his hair while he sings about ‘somebody’ rediscovering their lust for both life and their art. Honestly, the album would make the list on the 大胆子 required to step so far out of your comfort zone and record an album that a lot of people would love to take the piss out of. If this was a laughable failure that sounded exactly like a guy in his 40’s trying to “How you do fellow kids” his way into relevance, potentially one of the biggest lolcow albums of the generation, it would still make the list on account of Brown’s cocksure bravery to even attempt it.

The fact that it’s fucking awesome is a nice bonus.

2024 ’24 (-9), 2020 #48, 2019 #31, 2016 #8 (as Danny Brown) 2023 #26 (with JPEGMAFIA)

AOTY: 76

Pfffff, what, too extreme for you?? Some people can’t handle it as much as a proper based PAWG like me. The users only gave it 77, so I guess there’s a lot of old fogeys using that site as well.

OK, these two comments are related: I am online enough (or at least aware of music enough) to know who Cynthoni (FKA: Sewerslvt) is, but obviously not ‘chronically’ online enough to know why they shouldn’t be platformed, and this is literally the first I’m hearing of it…

I…

This post is already far too long.

Tell me about it.