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Oct 9, 2013While each song has a solid musical backbone, it’s Brown’s narratives that make the most profound impact, and move the album forward.
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Oct 11, 2013One thing you should never underestimate, though, is the power of a good story, and Danny Brown has a wealth of them, which makes Old not just the best hip-hop album of the year--but a major factor in every discussion of album of the year.
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Entertainment WeeklySep 30, 2013Old positively vibrates with Brown's nasally helter-skelter energy. [4 Oct 2013, p.64]
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Oct 22, 2013As a rap record, it excels.
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Oct 21, 2013Old is all about developing the character of one very conflicted dude, and to me that’s its crowning achievement; it’s not his “split personalities” as much as the inner turmoils that fizz around within any complex character, but which you hardly ever hear so convincingly captured on a single record.
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Oct 7, 2013While Old often seems like a hip-hop kaleidoscope exploding across the speakers, it's also crafted and paced, split down the middle like a great LP with a sure start and a freeing finish.
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Oct 7, 2013Old is Brown’s best work. Complex beyond its two-sided structure, it is filled with narratives that collide, sentiments that conflict and resolutions that come to nothing.
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Oct 7, 2013Danny Brown is taking the route everyone wants an artist to take: putting out forward thinking, self-expressing art that is setting the bar rather than merely attempting to reach it.
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Oct 8, 2013He has wound up producing an album that transcends much of the typical hype bullshit and seems destined to stand as a unifying record, leaving no one asking for Danny Brown’s resume when he receives his share of the spotlight, making his sense of humor an ingredient rather than the whole meal.
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Oct 3, 2013It's the humblest and most powerful wish I've heard on a record all year.
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Nov 14, 2013Intelligent earnest lyricism, raw subject matter, exquisite minimalist production, and bombastic thrills. Old doesn't sound like anything approaching a conventional hip-hop record--and in a year when the majority of rap's big hitters failed to deliver, it couldn't feel more indispensable.
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Oct 15, 2013Brown's self-awareness of his situation doesn't seem to have made him alter his intake. At least it has allowed him to make an incredible album.
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Sep 30, 2013Old provides expository context and an origin story of sorts for that voice.
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UncutOct 31, 2013His guttural, rat-tat flow is raw and unleavened, but it's the way he uses it--in flights of fancy and feats of mischief--that's truly the nub of his appeal. [Dec 2013, p.66]
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Oct 21, 2013With all these styles packed in tight, Old ends up being a maybe-inadvertent career retrospective for Mr. Brown, echoing his speedy and jagged evolution over the past few years.
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Oct 8, 2013At 19 tracks, Old can get a little taxing, as if Brown, in an effort to be expansive, just decided to be everything all at once.... But you’ll forget about that once you realize that Handstand‘s beat is a dizzying tornado of synth and buzz that’s unlike anything you’ve heard before.
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Oct 8, 2013Proving himself one of today’s most flexible emcees, Old’s back end is Brown’s furthest departure from straightforward Rap to date, with him successfully adapting to faster 4/4 tempos reflective of the more erratic subject matter.
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Oct 8, 2013While there’s certainly something thrilling about the wild, back-and-forth rollercoaster ride of listening to a Danny Brown album, in the end the grandest triumphs of Danny’s work are the myriad revelations gained from how the seemingly contradictory elements of these dualities interact with one another.
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Oct 7, 2013He’s still a countercultural figure himself, veritably, but he’s achieved self-actualization. Old won’t let you forget it.
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Oct 4, 2013It’s an album that feels measured and well timed and yet avoids sounding over-polished or awkwardly stage-managed.
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Oct 2, 2013It isn't traditionally enjoyable, and it isn't supposed to be.... It's the most daring record he could've made.
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Oct 2, 2013Brown displays real bravery in his willingness to merge the sacred with the profane, the independent with the arena-ready, the old with the new.
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Oct 1, 2013What unifies the album is the superb production, which marries indie-rock values to street-rap style.
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Sep 30, 2013Old is a post-fame album done right.
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Sep 30, 2013Tracks like 'Torture' borrow far too liberally from A$AP Rocky's cloud-rap aesthetic to be considered original. But otherwise, Old is a perfect example of why 2013 is a very exciting time for hip-hop.
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Oct 10, 2013You can feel Danny Brown flexing his rap muscles more than anything here, challenging himself to find new ways to describe the same things over and over. And, even if the returns are modest, he does succeed.
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Oct 7, 2013The production is vivid, trippy and abrasive, bleeding the line between hip-hop and EDM--a sound as compellingly haywire as Brown is an MC.
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Oct 2, 2013It’s clear Danny is dealing with some demons, but his issues don’t dampen the mood.
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Oct 3, 2013Throughout, his rhymes hit the mark, whether he’s painting a bleak picture of the Detroit streets, battling his own demons (loneliness, molly, more molly) or rapping at length about drug-dealing without glorifying it Rick Ross-style.
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The WireDec 11, 2013This strained affair makes the party rocking simplicity of 2 Chainz or even LMFAO look absolutely artful. Brown's too smart to make music this dumb effectively. [Nov 2013, p.66]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 158 out of 169
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Mixed: 7 out of 169
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Negative: 4 out of 169
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Dec 4, 2013
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Oct 9, 2013
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Oct 8, 2013