![]() ![]() Various key figures in the New Underground scene are also refugees from the major-label system who finally said “fuck it” and jump-started their careers via the Internet (sometimes signing another deal after being dropped simply for a cash infusion, but still releasing mixtapes and touring with the knowledge that they’re mostly on their own). At different points in the 2000s, Brown talked to Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam, even recording an album with 50 Cent sidekick Tony Yayo, Hawaiian Snow, released on iTunes via G-Unit last year. It’s a modest vision of success, but for 2011’s burgeoning New Underground scene, it’s a familiar, even archetypal story - wandering around the industry for years looking for a reasonable major-label deal and then ultimately finding artistic freedom and an audience on the Internet. It means that on the strength of a great album, er, mixtape, he tours decent clubs (or plays dodgy hipster parties), pops up on blogs and in magazines, and puts out the music he wants, when he wants, usually for free. “That really bothered me, that fucked me up, there’s no way you can ignore something like that,” he says.ĭanny Brown is perhaps hip-hop’s most fascinating new face, but that doesn’t mean he’s challenging Kanye or Jay-Z or Lil Wayne or Drake for pop notoriety or first-week sales numbers. A few months later, we speak over the phone while Brown’s on tour with Das Racist, and his voice raises to the excited octave in which he often raps as he recalls the situation. His eyes tighten, his flow focuses, and he delivers his lines right in their faces. Rocky is a hyped Harlem rapper ostensibly involved with the underground rap scene, but he feels like a mainstream throwback, clearly unprepared to perform, dropping names of upscale clothing brands (Rick Owens, Raf Simons) and brashly promoting himself off just two songs, “Purple Swag” and “Peso,” which, after moderately high YouTube traffic, have taken on the suspicious inevitability of industry-driven “hits.”Īs a response to the surly teen contingent, Brown fearlessly moves in their direction. Later on, it becomes clear that these budding hard-asses are there for A$AP Rocky, who performs later in the event’s “special guest” slot (earlier rumored to be Kanye West). Some of these kids start booing and one wanders through the crowd, waving his hands dismissively during Brown’s performance. For much of the day, lined up against the walls of the venue, groups of teenage boys, many shirtless, all smoking weed like doing so in public is actually transgressive, have treated the artists (Just Blaze, AraabMuzik, Fool’s Gold founders A-Trak and Nick Catchdubs) like they weren’t the reason everybody is gathered here on Labor Day. And for some reason, a few are downright angry. But quite a few at the party, thrown by tastemaking label Fool’s Gold, who released Brown’s fantastic new mixtape XXX, are confused by the rapper’s mix of sex punch lines, outré pop-culture references, and visceral flashbacks to a shitty upbringing in Detroit. The performance is electric and unhinged - the good kind of unhinged. Finally, with a nervous yelp, he starts rapping: “Colder than them grits they fed slaves / Me to rap is like water to raves / AKs with bayonets on deck, rep my set?/ Sorta like Squidward and his clarinet / I’m in ya bitch mouth / But she just fantasizing / Staring at my skinnys, said they’re so tantalizing / Dog, I’m strategizing, plotting on the throne.”Īlso Read Shooter Jennings and Yelawolf Share Last Sometimes Y Video for ‘Radio’ ![]() ![]() Throwing up his arms and sticking out his tongue, Brown reveals a significant gap where his front teeth should be, then doles out high-fives to a mob of hip-hop heads, hipsters, and dance-music dorks. As a cluster of hard drums and groaning psychedelic guitars drops, he yells, “ What?!” Rail-thin in skinny jeans and engulfed by a white T-shirt, one side of his hair shaved, the other long, straightened, and dangling in front of his face, Danny Brown steps to center stage. An Insanely Obsessive Infographic Tries (in Vain) to Diagram the Hip-Hop Galaxy.Odd Future: The New Underground’s Loud Family Goes on the Road.G-Side Launch a Hardscrabble, Regular-Dude Revolution.Hello, tireless Internet hustlers taking their futures into their own hands. Goodbye, big-money bollocks and big-city trappings. ![]()
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