Today, Danny Brown and Childish Gambino are among the most respected names in hip-hop. But back in the early 2010s, when both were first getting their starts in the music business, things were much different, as Gambino (aka Donald Glover) pointed out earlier this year. Danny recently reflected on his and Donald’s bumpy starts on his podcast with guest Redveil, recalling a joint tour that he says went horribly for them both after they collaborated on Glover’s Royalty track “Toxic.”
“I remember when I first did [‘Toxic’], people weren’t really f*cking with Childish Gambino like that around that time,” he reminisced. “‘Cause I remember when he asked me to go on that tour. My manager at the time was like, ‘You sure you wanna do this?’ I’m like, ‘Hell yeah, f*ck that. I’m tryna get on the road.’ Which was, I will say — that was one of the worst tours I ever played. They hated my guts every night; I was getting booed offstage. I remember I was crying one night, crying crocodile tears like a little bitch, sitting in some diner. We had some hoes with us and everything. I ain’t even wanna deal with the b*tches, man. I’m like, ‘They hate me, man. This sh*t sucks. I’m really trash.’”
He’s since gained some perspective thanks to having a little more distance from the traumatic events of his past. “When I look at it, man, our music was so different,” he elaborated. “I was coming from a whole different perspective than what he was coming on. But then when I got in the studio, I’m like, ‘Oh no, this n**** is dope.’ So I would say, more than anything, I’ve been impressed by people that I didn’t really think were like that. He’s just an all-around talented motherf*cker in that sense, and I be jealous of them motherf*ckers, too. I call them ‘art school kids.’ Like, this motherf*cker can really do anything; why you wanna rap?! This all I got! This all I know how to do!”
Danny Brown is likely to have better luck on his next joint tour with Jpegmafia this summer. He also recently addressed getting sober, which has done wonders for lots of his artist peers.
