Live Review: Danny Brown, Blind Pig, Ann Arbor MI (4/24/13)

I'm in this picture somewhere

It's 9:15 and the crowd is getting agitated. 'The ticket said 8 o'clock," the woman next to me groused in between sips of Corona Light. I flipped my hood up and leaned against a pole, I had been listening to the grooves of DJ Chill Will, Blind Pig's in-house scratcher, for the past 45 minutes and aside from his dubstep-tinged remix of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" I hadn't heard anything that really got me excited for the show. A few minutes later, LL Cool J's twin brother waded through the crowd and started flashing hand signals at Chill Will. The crowd started to buzz as he threw on the bass-boosted "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" remix. I inched closer to the stage, shouts of "Hybrid" and "Style" were tossed across the cramped venue. I finally began to see life in the crowd, a smile crept across my face: it was going to be a good night.

Nathan Flynn's Top 40 Songs of the 2012

After a year of listening to new music, I find that I’m not listening to a lot of 2012 music. There have been a few standout albums (Good Kid m.a.a.d. City, Some Nights, Vital, Cruel Summer) that I still listen to on a regular basis, but most releases, even some that I liked a lot- sorry Regina Spektor- have just fallen by the wayside. Well, this isn’t about the best albums of the year: this is about some diamonds in the rough scattered around some of 2012’s best and worst releases. My 40 favorite songs I would recommend checking out from this year (with links!) are:

Artist of the Day: Danny Brown

Danny Brown may not be the savior of Detroit's rap scene that Eminem was when Em came on the scene in the late 90's, but he's certainly a fun diversion from the increasingly homogeneous rap that we hear every day. He takes after Eminem in that he frequently references prescription drugs and his addiction to them, as well as his sense of humor and often explicit lyrics. Eminem comparisons aside, Brown is fiercely unique- to the point that G-Unit Records refused to sign him unless he changed his image- and everything from his clothes to his voice stand out as starkly different from what we've heard before. His second album, XXX, received huge amounts of hype from magazines like XXL and Spin and it's in no small part due to his individualism.

Whether in full-album form or in small doses, Brown never fails to entertain. The entertainment might come in the form of dirty jokes or a graphic description of him performing cunnilingus, yet it's as fun to hear as it is head-scratching. He is apt to one-up the featured stars when he does guest verses (see: his collaborations with Childish Gambino and the A$AP Mob from earlier this year) and is bold enough to name his forthcoming album after Ol Dirty Bastard- a rapper who he seems to believe he has a lot in common with. What really makes him different though is that he sets out to make people laugh. He's hilarious without having to incorporate the newly-chic "punchline rap" that the Young Money clique have popularized. His humor is an acquired taste, but it's laugh-out-loud funny once you understand it; although this will take longer for some people than others. Danny Brown may not be the type of music you want your kids listening to, but he's a voice that any rap fan/teenager would certainly appreciate hearing.  

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Promo Single 'Witit'