Red Bull Music Academy recently hosted “A Lecture With Danny Brown” as part of its UK Tour series.
During a discussion with journalist Hattie Collins, Danny Brown disclosed a few of his Hip Hop influences.
Despite Detroit’s rich music history, Brown could only recall one rapper he looked up to growing up.
“The first rapper I can remember is like Awesome Dre, because he had a major label record deal,” Brown says. “That was a big deal for me as a kid that you could be from there and make it.”
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The Detroit Hip Hop pioneer was one of the first rappers to breakthrough from Detroit with hits such as “Frankly Speaking” and “You Can’t Hold Me Back.”
Danny’s father introduced him at a young age to Wu-Tang Clan by purchasing him a CD Player and the Wu-Tang album.
“I didn’t know who Wu-Tang was,” Brown says. “I just knew my dad had good taste in music, so I checked it out. It was the only CD I had so I constantly, constantly listened to it all the time. As far as the sound that I wanted to make and the type of music that I wanted to make that was the project that I knew what direction I wanted to go towards.”
Danny says he identified with Wu-Tang because the group “was from the hood and they was on their gangsta shit but they still broadened their horizon when it came to the content of their lyricism with them talking about the kung fu-shit and them talking about Islam and stuff like that.
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‘These was hood niggas that was still on some nerd shit,” he continues. “I was in the middle. I lived in the hood, so I was able to adapt to do some hood shit but at the end of the day that didn’t represent me as a person. I played with action figures until I was in the ninth grade.”
Watch the full interview below:
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