One thing about this album is that Danny actually spent so much on it between samples, features, etc. that it put him into debt. This album didn’t sell much when it came out due to how weird it is but has gradually become a cult classic. I do think it speaks volumes to Danny as an artist that he was even willing to put this project out knowing he would likely not make his money back.
Every time I recommend this album to someone, I describe it as being in a dark room, on every type of drug, and sweating in a nightmare. Truly one of the best and darkest albums in hip hop 👌🏼
I've done this and once got the response "But why would anyone willingly want to experience that." Made me take a step back and think lol. Humans are interesting.
@@humblehobbit hahahaha same. My response would be “well I’m never going to even get close to these experiences, so why not experience it through music”
@@humblehobbit To that I'd say it's worth it because you can really take something from experiencing something like this, it can compel you. It's profound human expression.
Respect to Danny Brown for this one, he said he spent like $70k on samples and even though the album was acclaimed it wasn't some big mainstream album and he had to be careful over the next few years to recoup his losses. Another fun fact: the Ain't it Funny video is directed by Jonah Hill
Honestly I feel like so many people would be easily turned away from Danny because of his voice/delivery. I know I was at first. Once you get over that and it grows on you, Danny really is one of the most unique and standout rappers ever. Love this guy's music so much.
Right now I don't have an appreciation for it but hopefully at some stage in the future I will, after all I didn't like how Wesley's theory sounded and now I think its one of kendricks best songs
First heard Danny featured on a Gorillaz song in 2017 and thought his voice was strange, checked him out a few years later and now he's one of my favorite rappers.
59:00 just to answer your worries, danny is in fact okay as far as we know lol his next album after this is way more positive and chilled because he seems to have gotten his life in order. he also has a podcast now, its pretty funny
@@smokedoutvillain When I say “at his worst” I mean he was at his worst mentally. Not saying the music was bad. I think Uknowwhatimsayin? Was a solid album.
I really like your approach when it comes to checking the Genius annotations, using them to pick up details you weren't aware of but not letting someone else's interpretations or assumptions overrule your own thoughts.
yeah but he also misses out on a ton of stuff. not interpretations but just stuff that is just stating facts. it helps when theres stuff about the culture he doesn't know
The music video for Ain't it Funny really captures what you talked about during White Lines where people are getting enjoyment out of another person's suffering. Definitely worth watching.
It seems like you didn’t notice, but the sample on when it rain is from real by Freddie Gibbs, produced by madlib, which is on piñata, an album Danny brown shows up on.
Danny has been sober so a while. He's doing much better than he was during the time of this album. He has a podcast called The Danny Brown Show where he has mentioned these things. Great show.
Amazing album. This is one of those albums that changed how I looked at hip hop. It’s the post punk album of hip hop. It’s the industrial album of hip hop. This album understood me in a way few albums have. “Can’t make it out up out the gutter” And “Feelin like I’m not alive, but I know I’m not dead.” Are two of my fav lines. That song hit me hard. As a person who’s dealt with copious drug abuse and addiction as well as depression, lonliness and anxiety, this shit hit hard.
One of my absolute favorite albums of all time. The song Get hi is especially scary to me. it sounds very serene and somber and euphoric and thats so scary to me. He's rock bottom. He's absolutely high. Something bad happens? Smoke some shit. Stub your toe? Smoke some stuff. Its just so heartbreaking and scary. So glad you loved it
When It Rain is also a reference to Detroit techno; where techno originated. "They don't do it like this no more" nobody makes old school Detroit techno songs, which the beat of the song is very inspired by. Song is basically an ode to Detroit sound and life.
Hey Bob- really enjoyed your review/reaction. I was going to subscribe based on your AE thoughts, but when you dropped the sick Bill Hicks reference in I was committed. In the case of both artists I seldom meet even hip hop heads that appreciate or even know of either. My first real experience with Danny was with Atrocity and it was one of those iconic moments for a listener. I bought the cd while on a long road trip one Saturday night and it was just such a singular experience. It totally captured me upon my very first listen. I knew I'd found something special. It speaks to me very deeply, despite never using drugs. But there's other demons that will fill the gap too. Really enjoyed your thoughts and look forward to more.
would love a reaction to some of the music videos from this album. the videos for when it rain, lost, and ESPECIALLY aint it funny are some of my all time favorites
Tbh, I really was not into this album on first listen. And I didn't want to listen again but then I heard it after everyone started to say about how good this album is.......and now....this album is literally in my top 3. I think this is the kind of album you will appreciate more as you hear it repeatedly. The production is so unique.
most experimental albums are like that madvillainy, some rap songs for example, for me they were hard listens but after a couple of plays they are in my top 5 albums of all time
Same. But even on my very mixed first listen, I was still very conscious of the “what IS this?” thoughts that going through my head. I don’t think it’s top 3 rap or anything, but I still think it’s pretty great. Probably in my top 30 or 40. It was my 18th favourite rap album of the 2010s
I finally just listened to this album and I WAS also caught off guard by Danny's voice on 'Tell me what I don't know' I thought it was Ab-soul or schoolboy q, even tho i have heard danny rapping in a normal inflection on xxx This album also feels like watching an episode of Bojack Horseman going on a drug bender and we the listeners are just watching Danny on this long bender throughout the album The beats really portray the really dark atmosphere but it still has this cartoony zany quirkiness to it, so as Danny's voice, the lyrics are dark but his high pitch yuppy vocal inflection make it sound kinda like a cartoon character
Bob knowing that Akira is an anime movie, and this distracting him enough making him not understand Asa Akira is just a pornstar is sending me Edit: Danny is very much an underground artist despite the quality of his releases, his skill eclipses his popularity. Even as well respected as this album is, it would be mostly unheard without great reception and recommendation from online critics like Fantano
You have singlehandedly made me appreciate lyrics so much more. I am generally one to gloss over lyrics, but seeing you react to them in real time has made me realise how much I'm missing by ignoring them
One of the best albums ever made, and the featured artists Petite Noir and Kelela are amazing too. Danny Brown is also featured on Petite Noir’s album La Maison Noir which is a great album, and Kelela’s R&B album Take Me Apart album is another Top 5 album ever made imo. The song might be one of the calmer ones on the album (amazing though) but Kelela has a really innovative style too with experimental elements. Take Me Apart is one of the most essential R&B albums for you to hear
@@dylangrieb5986 i just feel like there’s a lot of albums you know. think about how many experimental jazz records have shaped modern music. so many genres. there’s a lot of music in the world, and there’s been a lot of music in the past few millennia
Hell for it is one of my favourite sample ever. It's so unexpected but I recognized it, it's from the jrpg persona 4 Knowing Danny Brown is a huge persona fan it makes sense, it's a sample from the track "who's there?" from the persona 4 ost. My favorite game ever and the soundtrack is definitely worth listening to
Don’t think that your content is bad because of that silence. I enjoy watching your videos just raw and uncut because it feels like you are just being you. Love your content!
I thought Tell Me What i Dont Know was a feature aswell for the longest time. Then one day i realized it actually sounds like Danny and was blown away when i found it was.
You should check out the 8 episode web series he did called "Danny's House" He brings on rappers and comedians to talk about music, ghosts, aliens, the robot apocalypse and more, it's hilarious.
ive been waiting for you to react to this for so long and it definitely paid off, hell for it is also my favorite. this album is one of my all time favorites, just the instrumental choices alone are so unique and on top of that he has that relentless flow. although i dont do drugs or anything i deeply relate to the sentiments of this album i used to listen it 3 times a day and to this day i still find small details in the production. every song has such a rich texture. when i first heard the album golddust also threw me off but thats because the song was so challenging, most of this album was so challenging in terms of production. golddust specifically tho has such a post punk-y vibe and his flow is just insane. he dabbles in all sort of genres in this album. there is no other album that sounds like this because danny pulled inspirations from everywhere(and thus the sound is not easy to replicate) and he made it work, im baffled how he does it. From the ground also felt out of place for me on the first listen but its just one of those moments where danny pulls back and gives the listener a break from this hell ride, same thing with get hi. most importantly tho, this doesnt feel like he wants people to pity him and its a genuine cry for help. When xxx came out and he popped off people (mostly)werent listening to him and his struggles they were just dancing to it. it was a party album for them and since he gathered a fanbase like that his next album old went more into a party direction, less introspective and personal songs and more party anthems. so this is him bluntly telling his listeners he is in pain fully aware that most of his mainstream listeners will be turned off by this, the ones that want the comfort of the high but arent willing to stick around for the low after the party is over. the opener doesnt even sound like a hip hop song, it sounds like a weird underground psychedelic punk song. sometimes i put the album on and look at the sound waves for every track and i found a lot small detail through that, for example on when it rain around 2:37 the drums build up on the left speaker while they fades out on the right. i cant even begin to talk about the lyrics, they are so funny disturbing witty and subtle i cant wrap my mind around it. he rides on the beats so smoothly. i could just talk about this album for hours but ill leave u alone now bob:)
Crazy how I look forward to these reactions more than I look forward to like episodes of some of my favorite shows dropping. Don’t really feel that for any other RU-vid channel.
I actually really like the lyric breakdown, because english is not my first language and I still struggle a bit understanding everything, even though I'm a fluent speaker. Also, you said you liked loud experimental stuff, but was iffy on the quieter experimental music and my first thought was either "He's either going to love or absolutely hate CLPPNG", lol
lmfaooo I love how you never click the annotations because you think they'll be stupid, but then the ones you skip are good and the ones you relent and click are the bottom of the barrel cruel fate
how great would it be to have Bob on the Danny Brown show as his first guest or or ! maybe Danny Brown on the additional thoughts/conversations w the community
At first listen when someone recommended this to me (and dannys music in general) i was so off put by his voice but man on the next few relistens it really becomes super iconic.. one of my favs of all time
I'm commenting into early because I'm always so full of anxiety but the name of the album, "Atrocity Exhibition", is a reference to a Joy Division song, if you haven't figured it out. By the way, just started seeing the vid, but I'm interested into seeing your reaction to "Ain't it Funny" because I relate to that song a lot.
Regarding the songs where Danny seems more sober I see it as brief moments of sobreity between highs and partys and that‘s how I make sense of it. I dunno if it‘s just me who also has these brief moments in parties or clubs but that‘s why the the track order makes sense to me How I made sense of Dancing in the rain without getting wet is when I think of it as another way to say Playing with fire without getting burned. I think someone from Dead End Hip Hop explained the line this way. They also said something really cool and it‘s that regarding the beats and production of this it seems like Danny also wanted to showcase that he is the only one who can rap on these crazy ass beats Love that you enjoyed and it deffenitely gets better when you listen to the album from top to bottom ;)
1:28:30 In Today, the genius lyrics are wrong here. In the chorus, Danny clearly says "so damn right I did it... today, today, today" - not "cheated." This makes a big difference in the meaning of the song to me.
The first point of the production is to convey these various inebriated states, but the second is to show Danny can flow over beats that literally no one else can.
Danny has another album after this, called "uknowhatimsayin¿", from 2019, and I think after XXX, Old and AE this album is almost like a victory lap of sorts, i think you would enjoy it. Also, you keep bringing up Danny's collab with JPEG, so... LP soon maybe?
