After 2023’s Quaranta captured him at his lowest ebb, Stardust is Danny Brown’s first album written and recorded entirely while sober. It sounds like the windows being thrown open. On the bright, psychedelic opener ‘Book of Daniel’, fizzing with live drums and celestial backing vocals, Brown narrates his emergence from addiction and arrival at a place of inner peace: “Sleeping real good at night ‘cuz I’m proud of myself”. This wholesome head-held-high attitude carries this fun, typically eccentric album, which knowingly disrupts familiar tropes of sobriety albums.
Stardust is undoubtedly Brown as his most pop – specifically hyperpop, which he describes as “some of the most creative shit I ever heard”. After the insular mood of Quaranta, with its themes of addiction and depression, it’s refreshing to hear Brown having unabashed neon-lit fun. He’s brought in a bunch of hyperpop artists as guests: 8485 provides a sweet chorus for ‘Flowers’, sibling duo Frost Children turn ‘Green Light’ into an emo rave, and Issbrokie adds a bratty bubblegum verse to ‘Whatever The Case’. Digital hardcore artist femtanyl energises ‘1L0v3myL1f3!’ with synthetic breaks, easing from a heady, hectic rush to a blissful plateau – the audio equivalent of faking it ‘till you make it. Brown is earnest about his new-found lust for life post-addiction, winking to the audience on occasion (“We all love a comeback story”).
A longtime favourite of Brown’s, Singer/songwriter/producer April Harper Grey – aka underscores – appears twice. Her instincts mesh with Brown’s on ‘Baby’, with his flow mimicking the rhythms of her chopped-up pop chorus. The big single ‘Copycats’ addresses fame as a kind of generational trauma within the music industry (“All I ever wanted was to be like you / Serial copycat”) with Brown and Grey passing its narrative of aspiration and burnout back and forth between them. It’s not a simple woe-is-famous-me track, though – it shows the glamorous appeal of fame too, appropriate for Brown’s current vampire rockstar look of blonde hair, no shirt and faux fur (“rap star, pop star, rock star, gimme that”). Brown’s effortless alignment with Grey and her fellow hyperpop artists feels like a continuation of his longtime affinity for new forms of electronic music, dating back at least to 2013’s Old. It’s also worth pointing out, in a world that is increasingly hostile towards trans people, that many of Brown’s collaborations on Stardust are trans women. I’m sure I won’t be the only listener wishing he had the chance to work with SOPHIE.
‘What You See’ is something of a coda to Quaranta. Using an unaffected delivery, Brown atones for past sins with a newly outward-facing attitude, examining his mistakes in the context of a future relationship. Closing the album, ‘All4U’ sees his sing-song flow suspended in Jane Remover’s sustained neon synths: “Now I do it all 4 u” he repeats. Sobriety often involves the acknowledgement of a higher power, but the “u” here is ambiguous – it could be himself, but it’s also the swathes of younger, greener artists that he’s lifting up and finding inspiration in.
