uknowhatimsayin¿

uknowhatimsayin succeeds in flipping our expectations of a Danny Brown album, delivering a project that’s masterfully produced and exquisitely executed.

Though it lacks in the experimentation of Atrocity Exhibition, it compensates with cohesion and undeniable quality. As a presentation of Brown as an exceptional rapper, it ticks all the right boxes.

There is no moment where Brown grabs your lapels and demands you to feel what he’s feeling, whatever it may be. He has called uknowhatimsayin¿ his “standup comedy album,” and the mastery on display is that of the comic going out there and killing. But the best-loved and most enduring comedians left their own blood out on the stage, too.

Even at its most mundane (like on the painfully repetitive title track), “uknowhatimsayin¿” represents an artist at his most polished and enthusiastic.

uknowhatimsayin¿ could and should be considered one of Danny’s strongest projects to date. Q-Tip’s musical guidance (including making it a simple 11-song tracklist) plays a major role, but a lot of redeeming qualities on this album are a testament to Danny’s artistry.

From the cartoonishly unhinged prog/ boom-bap hybrid “Savage Nomad” to “Shine” (a duet with Blood Orange that flirts with melancholic, synth-heavy new romanticism) it’s the seemingly contradictory emotional timbres that animate uknowhatimsayin¿ and provide the core tension that brings the project to life. [Nov 2019, p.50]

Relying less on atmosphere, tracks like Savage Nomad and Negro Spiritual reveal a rawness that balances his brisk delivery and minimal samples with renewed urgency. It comes with a caveat, though, as taking a more formalist direction puts the focus on technique rather than subject matter. And that's okay.

A unified, deliberate, and conscious work.

uknowhatimsayin¿ succeeds as a kind of high-wire act that balances Brown’s folk hero status against his documentarian sensibilities, tragedy against comedy, bluster against self-mockery. It’s shorter than his previous albums, and also lean in a way that few other rappers could replicate. Five albums in, he remains a singular talent who only needs a few short words to tell a good story.

uknowhatimsayin¿ may not immediately shine as brightly as the grandly ambitious and fearlessly experimental XXX or Atrocity Exhibition, and some of its tracks and vocal hooks are a little undercooked, but Brown’s latest reveals itself more and more with each listen.

As a whole it’s slightly too laid back to match the masterpiece status of 2016’s Atrocity Exhibition, but Brown is still leaving encrusted marks on the hall of fame.

Where his previous projects felt sprawling, ’uknowhatimsayin¿’ succeeds in feeling compact while delivering a powerful project that is expertly produced and concisely executed.

If anything, uknowhatimsaying¿ is a little more controlled than Brown’s previous record, and perhaps that’s the experienced hand of Q-Tip exerting influence. It does nothing to besmirch the crown that Brown has already claimed as his own – as one of the best, and most boundary pushing, artists in the rap game.

Keeping up with his often logic-defying wordplay can be a challenge. But the payoff is a startling insight into how the world looks from the inside one of hip-hop's most original and consistently inventive minds. [Nov 2019, p.110]

It's Brown's pen game and ear for production that carry the album's comedic spirit, anchored by technical and stylistic changes.

Its uvowedly less manic, but uknowhatimsayin¿ still cuts deep. [Nov 2019, p.93]

While other artists struggle to translate personal development into their music, Brown does it with ease, navigating growth in a way that’s not only deeply personal but also extremely honest.

Brown still raps like he's from the future, it's just a timeline less removed from ours where Tribe Called Quest nostalgia and retro instrumentation is fully in vogue. Of course, this being Danny Brown we're never getting an easy meal, and some of the best moments see him shaking it up once again.

uknowhatimsayin¿ isn't Danny Brown's most anything, but it's the least a lot of things: least intense, least avant-garde, least worried about the world around it. And when we're talking about an MC for whom more is better, it's easy to feel like we've lost something essential.