Repressed and back in stock at long last, XXX is Detroit rapper Danny Brown s follow-up to 2010 s album The Hybrid . While XXX is certainly a very ahem erotically charged album, its explicitness is far from purely sexual, and it is not all pornographic boasts (though it is that too). XXX feels simultaneously more unhinged, chaotic and coherently of-a-piece than The Hybrid , the chameleon capriciousness of Danny s manic style matched and stimulated by production which draws from blistering, detuned alt-rock, trippy psychedelia, Kraftwerk-inspired techno and grime, of which he is a huge fan. So what does he rap about? Well, mostly himself, but the dominant theme of XXX probably boils down to sex and drugs. There is copious consumption of both described. Many listeners will find Danny s style intolerably garish and irritating, his content offensive and ugly, the production on far too off-kilter. Others will find his flow explosive, filled with a lunatic charm, and never boring (most tracks are short and don t outstay their welcome) and the same goes for the content and production. Yet he conjures an intensity of expression that is completely honest, unrestrained and unmannered. It s Brown s embracing of contradictions that makes him such a fascinating rapper, and XXX is given depth and longevity by a tension, or collision between hardcore rap s reality fix and the avant-garde s desire for creative and expressive freedom from reality. XXX might just represent the most polished and fully formed manifestation of street-meets-art rap so far.
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