Old

The frantic yawp that made The Hybrid a promising sign and XXX a wild star turn is still here in the midst of Danny Brown’s great early-decade run. But to get to all the bass-music and EDM flourishes that made him a big festival attraction (present on late-album tracks like “Dip,” “Dubstep,” and “Kush Coma”), you first have to hear him as the man with deeper reasons to turn to escapism — the lingering trauma, deprivation, and pressure that reveals all his hedonism to be a kind of catharsis.