Danny Brown has opened up about still being in debt years after the release of his 2016 Atrocity Exhibition album thanks to a spending spree on samples.
The Detroit rapper opened up about his financial struggles relating to his 2016 LP in an interview last year, which is recirculating on social media this week.
“I’m definitely still in the red with that album. You muthafuckas wonder why you don’t get music from me all the time. I can’t put out shit I gotta get out of debt,” he explained.
“I would delete Atrocity Exhibition in a heartbeat. I spent $70,000 in samples and a muthafucka sold 7,000 first week. I think someone lost it there.”
Brown revealed that was the first time Warp Records give him a hefty budget to the tune of $100,000 and he was going to put that cash to use and make the best project he could.
“I ain’t ’bout to go cheap out and then pocket the rest. Because you know that’s what a lot of muthafuckas do,” he continued. “Now, I didn’t know the samples were gonna get up to that high. Then I still went over the budget I spent $50,000 on mixing and mastering.”
Just to name a few, DB utilized samples from “Get Down” by The Montereys as well as Giovanni Cristiani’s “Fragments of Crystal’s” and an interpolation of Frayser Boy’s “Wish A Mutha Would” for the project’s final single “Really Doe.”
Atrocity Exhibition includes features from Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt, B-Real and more. The LP was released in September 2016 and debuted at No. 77 on the Billboard 200.
Regardless of its chart position, the project was critically acclaimed and received a positive review from HipHopDX with a score of 3.9/5.
Since then, Danny Brown has only released one other album, 2019’s uknowhatimsayin, which also didn’t perform well from a commercial standpoint, reaching a peak of No. 134 on the Billboard 200.
Brown’s focus has shifted away from music and he’s discovered another lucrative passion with the launch of his The Danny Brown Show podcast, which debuted in May 2022.
