Danny Brown - Stardust

After the storm clouds part, clarity. ‘Stardust’ is Danny Brown’s seventh solo album, and the first to be written and recorded entirely sober. After years of his substance use being something that he folded into his wildman persona, he had audibly hit a wall on his last record, 2023’s ‘Quaranta’ - an unusually sombre piece of work that had his vulnerabilities on full show. Now, on ‘Stardust’, you get the impression that Danny feels he has to prove himself all over again. Opener ‘Book of Daniel’ strikes a redemptive tone, especially with a bright-eyed guest turn by Quadeca - “don’t be scared, it’s alright” - but there is still room for chaos to reign in the rapper’s sound, even if it no longer rules his personal life. 

‘1999’ is a frantic exercise in high-intensity glitch that comes off like Atari Teenage Riot, whilst the scintillating ‘Whatever the Case’ features perhaps the best guest verse on the record, by up-and-comer ISSBROKIE. These are the moments that feel like the authentic Danny of old, but they don’t jar against the more reflective likes of ‘What You See’; here, he has carved out space for both sides of his personality to sit comfortably alongside each other. Perhaps most thrilling is when those two sides merge, as they do on the epic, stylistically fluid ‘The End’, which runs nearly nine minutes and confirms - as does ‘Stardust’ as a whole - that his ambition remains undimmed as he opens this new chapter.