Michael's Cut

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On “Bass Jam,” a spacey medium of clouds and angel wings ascend to picturesque memories. A white staircase awaits, but the supercut elongates this specific moment. Anita Baker, Mary J. Blige, and Sade all play on the cassette. Financial burdens gloom over the bass guitar, but it’s music as an entity that becomes the fuel for resilience. Mornings smell like scrambled eggs and bacon, contrasted with parents separating and reuniting weekly. The sacrifices made to flourish in adulthood remind our narrator of the times when struggle was necessary, integral to the everyday. “Play it one mo’ ‘gain,” he asks, relaxing amidst the turbulence, pleading music to be the adhesive to his and his family’s worries.

Quaranta acknowledges music as our narrator’s coping mechanism, his true love, and notably, his legacy. At 42-years old, Danny Brown comes to terms with fate, finishing his contract with the pioneering Warp Records and expressing his age in a rap game crowded with the up-and-coming youth. Time becomes both Brown’s antagonist and cheerleader. The countdown begins once the official fires the gun: how much more time remains for our Detroit savant, and how does someone as notorious as Danny Brown leave his legacy for the next wave(s) in hip hop?

The title track sets the tone away from the manic sound board dominating Brown’s past records. “This rap shit done saved my life,” Brown begins, with wailing guitar notes and mellow keyboards evoking smoke and dumpsters filling an alleyway. This sentiment also applies to many of Quaranta’s tracks, Brown touring his ordeals that motivated him to find breakthrough. “Lost everything in pursuit of my dream / pushed everyone away, now no one here for me,” he softens his voice. Yet it’s not his fault they all come back right after.

Taking the fruits from his success story, Brown accepts his role as a lecturer to the contemporary. The next three songs revolve around critique and guidance about hip hop’s current state. “Tantor” briefly revives his cartoonish mania, spilling wordplay like cold brew over obnoxious brass: “strap up,” he orders, “it’s time to rhyme.” Even when Brown treads heavy on the puns, his comedic ethos embraces these points as an advantage, not to mention his clever arrangements and emphases on them. Compare it to the cold commentary about hip-hop trend chasers, and you’re left with scabs: “but with this rap shit, a n***a sell his booty-hole,” he scorns with cymbals plowing through “Ain’t My Concern.” The following “Dark Sword Angel” amplifies the coldhearted play-by-play: he’s still on top of his shit, with or without a record deal.

Beyond this succession, the record journeys through its heavier subjects with a thicket of feelings. Frustration strains on the home-centric tracks in “Y.B.P.” and “Jenn’s Terrific Vacation,” where a dissonance of poverty and gentrification collide. However, power reveals in their quietness. The former track’s a moody funk construction detailing one of many Detroit poverty stories, while the latter erases those anecdotes for a 5-over-1 complex. Kassa Overall’s jazz-electronic touch marks “Jenn’s Terrific Vacation” as Quaranta’s most compelling composition. As Brown succumbs to the uncontrollable loss of his city, the pianos and drums swivel with unpredictability, similar to the angst felt when the eviction sign’ll hang out your door. “What you gon’ do?,” Overall whispers, and the working class slowly disappears.

“Down Wit It” ruminates about a failed relationship and its toll on Brown’s psyche. Snares penetrate through Paul White’s downcast synths as the track accrues melancholy, none of it truly resolved by the conclusion. That residual feeling doesn’t last forever, fortunately; “Shakedown” reminds us about other potential lovers with praises and croons, but besides its placid atmosphere, the track emotionally resides elsewhere from the album’s latter half. 

Defeat and acceptance seem to correlate within Quaranta’s confines. When we examine our lives throughout the years, we’ve to accept ourselves as sometimes out the equation. “Hanami” confesses time “waits for no man” over strings and Japanese woodwinds. It’s lush but fearful: how do we continue to live knowing one misstep can crumble everything? The hypotheticals thrive in the last half: “Celibate” asserts Brown’s drug-dealing days as the past, but “Hanami” opens a polarity should he struggle with his music career. Insecurities build stress but don’t tamper Brown’s spirit; rather, they encourage him to persevere. As “Bass Jam” reclines under a blanket of nostalgia, Brown assures himself as not a victim of the times, but as someone who’ll adapt and evolve with them, that music’ll never fail him through this never-ending cycle.

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