VIBE & RapGenius Present: 10 Dopest Lyrics From Danny Brown’s 'Old' LP
Danny Brown's Old, uses a “Side A” and “Side B” concept, which allowed Danny to be both lyrically diverse and also sonically experimental on his latest. His stories range from sobering and retrospective to introspective and psychadelic. Danny has always been known for his unique voice and cadence coupled with drug-influenced rhymes, but if you dig deeper you’ll notice here that Brown has real depth in both clever wordplay and heartfelt storytelling. We learn much more about who Danny is and where he came from, and in interesting and lyrical ways. Here are Danny Brown's 10 best lines from Old.
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10. "25 Bucks"
“Now I'm trapped in the trap and the devil ain't forgettin'/Wanna see me dead or locked in a prison/In the system with division only thing add up/Fucked up cause a nigga tryna get a couple bucks” This hook bluntly acknowledges the trap is just that: a trap. Danny goes on to mention how the devil is still punishing him for past deeds. There’s a bit of a political bend in his arithmetic wordplay (“division”/”add up”) as he acknowledges that the the justice system unjustly opposes him. It’s a chorus with a somber message.
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9. "Wonderbread"
“Course some niggas stomped on my head/All because they wanted the bread” “Wonderbread” is Danny’s account of random happenings from his childhood while walking up the block to buy food for his family. These bars, from the end of the song, show that anyone can catch a beatdown in the hood of Detroit, even a kid. Before Danny had actual money, his bread was always at risk of being stolen.
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8. "Torture"
“Unc beating on my auntie, gunshots outside was sorta like fireworks/We know they weren’t fireworks, its December 21st” Danny uses Side A of the album to describe what it was like growing up in his hood in Detroit. These deeply personal lines from “Torture” hit the listener with multiple images at once that suggest that his upbringing was nothing short of the song’s title: Inside the house he saw violence and outside he heard gun shots.
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7. "Clean Up"
“Hotel rooms crushing pills and menus/Daughter sending me messages saying ‘Daddy I miss you’/But in this condition I don’t think she need to see me” Rather than reflecting on his childhood, Danny reflects on his own daughter. While other tracks describe how drugs soothe his pain we now see the other side of it, as Danny contemplates the impact of his lifestyle on his child.
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6. "Dip"
“Like Lieutenant Dan I'm rollin'/Back to back I keep on smokin'” A humorous nod to the classic film Forrest Gump, in which Lt. Dan landed in a wheelchair after a war injury. And like, Lt. Dan, Danny is also rolling, although he's no paraplegic. Danny feels something like the lieutenant when he’s rolling from Molly.
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5. "Kush Coma"
“My forehead's sweaty, my eyelids heavy, feeling like I ain't goin' make it/Cause inside my head's like a firework show in the 4th July in Las Vegas” Danny paints a very clear picture of what his coma feels like. There’s little euphoria in the high, as he’s stuck in a scary headrush. What appears as a smokers anthem turns out to be Danny’s dark attempt to numb himself from his pain, only to find himself in another dismal place waiting to come down.
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4. "Lonely"
“If the gang eat you guns barking at your doggie bag/Get took out for your take out now you carry out” Danny disguises a serious reality with clever wordplay (“doggie bag”/”take out”). The pressure of the streets turns something as simple as a take-out bag into a life-or-death situation. You might get shot for no real reason at all where he’s from.
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3. "Red 2 To Go"
“Red head ho, like a young Kathy Griffin”
While this is not the most lyrical line on the album, it’s a standout for how deep it goes. A throwback to the unforgettable Nosiey interview between Danny and A$AP Rocky, in which they consider whether or not to hit among many other things. This is also a callback to Danny’s unforgettable “Molly Ringwald”.
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2. "Float On"
“You can never understand all the pressure I'm against/Getting high thinking how to make it better than your last shit" At the end of an album that takes you high and low, “Float On” feels good. The sophomore slump puts real pressure on artists to outdo themselves from one album to the next. Surely Danny had this very dilemma after XXX. Here he describes that anxiety he faced trying to make a body of work that could compete with his first album.
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1. "Float On"
“And no matter how it gets I hold on/Rolling up this dope to cope I float on, nigga I float on” While the majority of this song is filled with lines about Danny's depression and anxiety, there is a glimmer of hope towards the end. The entire album makes clear that Danny has been through his share of adversity, but he’s still pushing. There’s a solace he found in his dope that allows him to keep on keeping on.
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