The reason why Danny Brown doesn’t like Detroit
Danny Brown is a Detroit man, born and raised, and he has love for his home city. But that doesn’t mean he likes it very much.
Brown was surrounded by gang activity as a kid growing up in Michigan’s most populous city, albeit his parents tried to protect him from it. He was encouraged to stay at home with video games and whatever else kept him entertained, but, as he got a little older, he started to rebel. He’d leave the house and would stay out for days at a time.
By the time he turned 18, he was firmly involved in street crime. He started dealing drugs, although he did it with grander aspirations in mind. He was supporting himself through this illicit trade, while planning ahead to make it as a rapper.
Brown’s drug-dealing ultimately caught up with him, and he spent a period of time behind bars. It was only after being released that he started to take music more seriously, putting it ahead of dealing and becoming determined to find success. By self-releasing mixtapes, and eventually by releasing a debut studio album in 2010, he did just that.
While Detroit is at the heart of Brown’s music and identity, he doesn’t actually consider himself to be a representative of the city. He holds some love for the place, but he doesn’t have a straightforward relationship to it. The city’s problems are plain to him, and he is not prepared to romanticise them.
“A lot of rappers are always about repping they hood,” he remarked to The Fader in 2013, “but for me it’s always about getting out the hood.”
Brown explained that, as soon as he was able to, he left Detroit and moved to Royal Oak, another city in Michigan. He said he loved his home state of Michigan, but Detroit specifically was difficult for him. He loved it, too, but he “might not like Detroit so much.”
Detroit “got problems,” as he put it, and those problems make it difficult for him to uncomplicatedly celebrate his home. Some Detroit rappers, he noted, seemed to have no problem doing this, but he personally couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Brown named names. He noted that the way Big Sean raps about Detroit is incredibly different to the way he does, as if they’re “talking about two different cities.” In a way, he felt that they actually were. Sean, Brown claimed, “went to the best high school in the city” and “probably was real spoiled or sheltered,” whereas he painted himself as understanding Detroit’s harsher character. The Detroit that Brown knew wasn’t an easy place to grow up in.