SLAMXHYPE recently chopped it up with Detroit phenom Danny Brown outside NYC’s Prohibit store to talk about his critically acclaimed release XXX. During the interview, Brown discussed why he ended up signing with DJ A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold imprint. He said he Fool’s Gold was one of the few labels that offered him financial backing without artistic compromise.
“[There were] just a certain amount of places that I wanted to even fuck with,” he said. “I wasn’t really a label type of nigga, so I just was like what labels would be cool enough for me. I never thought it could happen, but Fool’s Gold was one of the names I threw out, and a nigga made it happen. I honored to be in the situation, I’m just trying to hold my spot.”
The Detroit veteran also discussed whether he’s ever felt any industry pressure to change up his game. He said that certain people in the music industry have tried to get him to change his musical styles over the years, but that he refused to betray his Detroit roots. He also added that while it’s taken him nearly a decade to make a name for himself, it was worth the wait.
“I remember when I used to come out [to New York] back in ’03 to shop music, and…it was like, [industry insiders would say] ‘You sound country,’ because I’m Detroit [or] the Midwest, I guess,” he recalled. “They expected me to do a more of a down south-style of music, but if you’re Detroit, it’s not really like that…but I can say that was like an instance of [those commercial pressures], where it was like, ‘Maybe you should do that style of music,’ and I was, ‘Nah, we ain’t really do that from the D.’ After a while, it picked up.”
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He added, “[What] I’ve learned it is that it’s an industry, but at the end of the day, it’s still the music industry, so nothing else matters but music. All that other shit – marketing and all that – you could have all that, but if you’re music sucks, it still [sucks]. The music has to be good for anything else to happen. Just like selling drugs – if you’ve got [bad] dope, ain’t nobody gonna buy it. If you’ve got some good work…it might take some time, but eventually, somebody’s gonna get high off it.”
The full interview can be seen below.
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