Smh the coli never lets up on its bay area slander.
A LOT of detroit rap sounds like shyt you would've heard released by 40's Sick Wid It records back in the 90s. No one sounds like 40, but a WHOLE LOT of motherfukkers sound like his brother B Legit.
This isn't surprising given that Bay Area rappers used to have a heavy presence throughout the Midwest. Cities like Akron, Kansas City, and Detroit have deep ties with the Bay Area rap scene, and up until recently, Bay Area artists would tour almost exclusively through the midwest. For whatever reason, the Bay exported a lot of records to the region.
Interesting how the Pac song Payroll redid was the bay area posse cut, produced by two bay area producers, and is an example of the mobb music sound. As it turns out, Bay Area rap history isn't just hyphy music.
Detroit and the Bay have a few similarities, but frankly they're still unique enough for me to differentiate. Other cities like Akron and Portland (I'd imagine Seattle would too but I never check music from out there) used to sound straight like some Bay shyt. Detroit was never that.
Detroit is easily the hottest scene in America right now, and I think people are going to be shocked to see that Detroit has more or less had the same sound for the past ten years. Detroit rappers been dropping heat for the past decade, it's just that most of the country was infatuated with Atlanta. Nonetheless, the bay and Detroit showed a lot of love towards one another during this time, resulting in a lot of collaborations between the regions.
HATTIE COLLINS
Just going back to that track, that “Pockets Fat” track. You can feel quite a strong E-40, bay area...
DANNY BROWN
Oh yeah. In Detroit that’s a big influence, period. You can’t go nowhere without hearing bay influenced music. I remember, even I was thinking about that, I remember my first underground artist I ever heard in my life was Too Short, where I realized it. I would hear rap music on the radio and I would see rap music videos on TV. Then I knew my uncles and my cousin, they played this one tape that I never heard nowhere else besides them motherfukkers playing it. It had like 1,000 cuss words every two minutes. It was Too Short, it was Freaky Tales. I knew that it was another side of it. I see all this MC Hammer and all whatever, Vanilla Ice, all that commercial rap. People that I was hanging around in the hood, they wasn’t listening to that stuff.
HATTIE COLLINS
That opened the door for you to discover that whole west coast.
DANNY BROWN
Yeah, yeah. It started with Too Short. Like I said, when I went to my friend’s house we played Spice 1. My dad didn’t really listen to too much west coast rap. The only thing he listened to west coast was Ice T, NWA. Which, really, if you think about it, NWA was kind of like Bomb Squad influence because he loved Public Enemy. Public Enemy, Tribe Called Quest is my dad’s favorite shyt. That’s all I heard going to school, him taking me to school. On the drives it was Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim. The real good stuff, the good rap.
HATTIE COLLINS
What was it about the bay area stuff that you just felt more connected to? Apart from any swearing or whatever.
DANNY BROWN
I think, in some sense, it’s not necessarily even me, I think it’s Detroit in general, is that we kind of share the same mentality with Oakland and northern California for some reason. I don’t know, I guess it’s just the whole hustle and I guess the pimping. It’s the pimping. It’s the whole pimp vibe. I guess we just get influenced by it.
Detroit, we grew up on that whole pimp shyt of wearing suits and gaiters and shyt. Oakland, they live that lifestyle, and San Francisco, the bay, they live that lifestyle to the fullest. I guess, in some sense, Detroit looks up to that.
HATTIE COLLINS
From discovering all that, E-40 and Too Short and all those people, where did that lead you to next as a rapper? What else did you discover and how did you discover it?
DANNY BROWN
Yeah, the bay and Detroit, our connection. Even if you go and listen to more Detroit underground artists, the street rappers, it’s totally by influenced. Like Cashout Doughboyz and then before them it was like Street Lordz and Chedda Boyz. All that was bay area influenced. Even that, like E-40 and B-Legit and all them, they would hang out in Detroit.
There wasn’t too many rappers that would come and be in the hood of Detroit. You can go to a clothing store on Seven Mile and E-40’ll be hanging out. That was a big deal to us because there wasn’t too many rappers that would come to Detroit and wanted to get into our culture of the hood shyt. E-40 was like... That’s why I love him so much. He’s one of my biggest influences in rap, like a mentor to me. Every time I talk to him, I probably get on his nerves when I talk to him because he probably just want to kick it and just be cool and it probably feels like a fukking interview when I’m with him. I’m always asking him shyt, like, “Give me the game big homie, give me the game.” That’s all I tell him.
