When Danny Brown announced his third album, Atrocity Exhibition, back in August, a few of the features made a lot of sense. Artists like Earl Sweatshirt, Ab-Soul, Kendrick Lamar, and Kelela are people you can see rocking with Brown’s raucous energy. But among those acts, one name stuck out like a sore thumb among the rest, and that person was Petite Noir. If you’re familiar with his work, you know that the South African singer/songwriter and his downtempo style is probably the exact opposite of Danny’s wild electricity. But the two linked up nevertheless, and we finally get the result of that collaboration courtesy of NPR’s All Songs Considered. Listen to the song, “Rolling Stone,” at around the 26 minute mark.
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Weirdly enough, though probably not these days, the two artists established the collab via Twitter:
“One of those type of days, I was up at 4 in the morning, and I was checking my DM’s and I had a DM from Petite Noir. And he was like, he liked my music, so I checked his music out… I had nothing else to do. I was going to go back to bed, but I checked it out and I wasn’t sleepy no more, I watched the video like 5 times.”
From then on, the two went back and forth collaborating over the internet sending back beats and vocals until it came to be.
Usually when Danny hits on the concept of being an out-of-control rockstar, the mood is chaotic to match that. But here on “Rolling Stone,” things feel more adrift than rocky like on “When It Rain” and “Pneumonia.” It’s a great track and preview for what’s to come, as well as an insightful interview about the whole album.
Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition drops on September 30.
