Danny Brown Recruits Kendrick, Earl and Other Famous Friends on "Really Doe"
Rap posse cuts were once about exposure, giving lesser-known friends a platform to show off their skills in a close-quartered, competitive, and fun atmosphere. However, in the internet age, they’ve become something else, forgoing function and putting the good times first. The modern posse cut is less commercial showcase and more super-cypher, a low-stakes arena for testing the mettle of like-minded MCs and the sharpness of their bars. Consider cuts like G.O.O.D. Music’s major label roll-call “Mercy,” A$AP Rocky’s rap freshman field day “1 Train,” Eminem’s city unifier “Detroit vs. Everybody,” and Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire’s indie rap party pack “The Last Huzzah!” These exhibitions were simply about getting a lot of rappers in one place. It isn’t a coincidence that Danny Brown is featured on three of them: He’s well-suited for any rap cast you could dream up.
Brown’s posse cut, “Really Doe,” from his upcoming album Atrocity Exhibition, is a hard-hitter that carries on this recent tradition, linking Danny with rappers of his caliber. It’s a five-minute whirlwind of word games over twinkling chimes, dusty drums, and snarling bass. All four performers started buzzing during the same window in the early ’10s, and their verses share a common thread: tracing how things have changed for them since.
“Really Doe” is a track of reunions. It’s produced by Dilla disciple Black Milk, who collaborated with Brown on the EP Black & Brown; it brings Danny back together with Kendrick Lamar (who both appeared on A$AP Rocky’s posse cut “1 Train”); and it reconnects the Detroit rapper with frequent collaborator Ab-Soul (“Terrorist Threats,” “Ride Slow,” and “Way Up Here”). Alongside his prodigy Earl Sweatshirt, they rip with reckless abandon. Though they each have their own particular methods—Danny bawls out quick-striking and unorthodox zingers, Ab-Soul imparts stoner wisdom through careful pronunciations, Kendrick winds knotty head-scratchers, and Earl packs dense wordplay in carefully unspooling schemes—they work well as a group, filling the crags of Milk’s thwacking production with kinetic flows. “They say I got the city on fire,” Kendrick crows on the hook—and honestly, that applies to pretty much everyone here.
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