Atrocity Exhibition

Danny Brown

Warp

Three and a half stars

Don’t be fooled by Danny Brown’s real-name, no-gimmicks demeanour – it’s about the only ordinary facet of the Detroit rapper.

This fourth album might be the first time he’s held together abstract, jarring flows long enough to blow your mind more that give you a headache.

The first omen of this is lead single, When It Rain. Riffing off a skeletal ghetto house/footwork-style beat, it's a startling, breathless three minutes that resembles little other hip-hop.

That is partly Brown's beauty: his art-meets-street methodology draws you in, because half the time you have no idea what's going on. One relatively straight-up exception is Really Doe, featuring the album's only indisputably A-list guest, Kendrick Lamar.

His verse includes the boast “taking off to Abu Dhabi” – here’s hoping that means a show here soon.

Occasionally, the album zooms far out into orbit – Brown has said: “I can rap over two pots scraping together” – and that sometimes approaches the overall effect. At its best, however, it showcases a rapper who can take on all-comers.