When I sit down with Danny Brown in his makeshift greenroom before his Brooklyn listening party and panel event, he often pivots into his higher-pitched “rapping” voice. If you’re unfamiliar, the rapper toggles between a high pitch and a lower-pitched tone throughout his music; the former is reserved for unserious, more playful, light topics, whereas the latter is saved for the serious stuff, a lot of which relates to drug use, abuse, and its resulting side effects.

He sounds content. He seems at peace.

It’s two days before the release of Stardust, his seventh studio album, long-awaited, long-form foray into hyperpop, and his first full batch of music written since going to rehab in 2023. His time in rehab was when now fully sober Brown got really into hyperpop, using his half-hour of daily phone time to listen to 100 gecs.

“After I got out of rehab, people started reaching out to me and telling me, ‘You’re the reason I got sober,’ and I realized that’s my purpose: helping people through my music.”

Brown’s palpable tranquility is more than peace – it’s this newfound purpose.

Today, he dons a pair of black skinny jeans, a scarf, a Loro Piana Embroidered Sport Shell hat, and, the focal point, his bright colored toe socks and flip flops. As always, he’s not trying to impress anyone. In fact, he thinks he may be immune to that these days.

“Once you’re sober, you ain’t cool to more,” he laughs. “And it’s not to say it like that, it’s to say that all the things you thought were making you cool – like drugs and alcohol – aren’t. The only way to be cool is by being yourself. And then you realize, ‘Oh, it wasn’t the drugs, I was just really cool anyway.” Brown expands on this sentiment later in the night during the panel, and the audience particularly enjoys this answer, the room filling with applause and encouragement for Brown. “I used to rap so much about drugs and alcohol, and when you take that away, it’s like ‘What do I even rap about now?’”

It’s safe to say he found what to rap about. Stardust’s hyperpop-charged ethos – a sound Brown has been sitting on for a long time – sounds as such, and revels in themes of resilience.

“The first time I heard ‘money machine’ by 100gecs, I thought ‘I could rap on that sh*t,” Brown recalls of his COVID-era hyperpop fixation. However, he was knee-deep in Quaranta at the time and had to “commit to the bit,” finishing the project and its starkly different, somber sound, recorded entirely in his low-pitched voice.

His first album written fully sober, Stardust sees Brown shine in his own post-rock bottom self-determination, lifted by a handpicked lineup of emerging musicians – two of whom are seated next to him on tonight’s panel. Portuguese DJ and music producer Holly and emerging Chicago artist, NNAMDÏ are just a couple of over a dozen artists and producers Brown sourced online and connected with through the co-founder of deadAir Records, Jesse Taconelli, a fellow Michigan native and OG fan of Brown’s.

Also Jane Remover’s manager, Taconelli was the one who not only put brown Brown on to a myriad of new hyperpop talent, but also put him in touch with Jane, Frost Children, underscores, 8485, and many others. “Jesse really understood how meaningful this project was to me. Without meeting Jesse, this album probably wouldn’t have happened. I couldn’t see myself just sliding into Frost Children’s, DMS, like, ‘I’m Danny Brown, I wanna do a song with you,’” he laughs. “I don’t think it would have worked.”

As he gets older, Brown can’t help but feel more set in his music-making ways, confined to the “weird rapper” label. “Even when I think I make something pretty normal or not that weird, people are like ‘This is weird,’” says Brown. But working with these younger artists put a battery in his back to challenge his own conformity. “When you work with people who are young, like, they still have this like, youthful exuberance of things they can take over the world. Nothing is stopping them. They feel like everything is possible.” SOPHIE was another one of the young artists Brown really wanted to work with, but never got the chance.

In the spirit of one of the song titles, “Lift You Up,” I ask Brown what’s been lifting him up lately, to which he responds, “My personal trainer.” He’s been big in his fitness bag lately, counting macros and calories and spending mornings in the gym. Both his mind and body seem to be in the

While the album does mark a staunch shift in Brown’s sonic persona, the pop star says that beyond the storytelling, there is a literal connection between each album. The final track of each album in Brown’s discography, he shares, ties into the first track of its successor album.

We left off with “Bass Jam” on Quaranta, and pick back up with Stardust’s standout Quadeca feature “Book of Daniel.” Where “Bass Jam” reflects on the past, “Book of Daniel” looks to the future. He croons to close out the track, “Don’t be scared, it’s alright / We’re gonna make it by the end of the night.”

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Stardust is streaming everywhere now.