It’s a cold night in early winter when Danny Brown strolls into an Irish pub to talk to CREEM. Greeting him and knowing his rock ’n’ roll leanings, I compliment the rapper, clad head to toe in leather with a leather-daddy hat, as looking like the god of vocalists, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford. But I immediately get pushback: “Well, I think it’s more like when hip-hop first started, Melle Mel and that sort of thing.”

Fair enough, and same difference.

Brown and I are here to discuss Quaranta, his new album released just a few days before and slathered in universal acclaim on the heels of a similarly lauded record, his collaborative LP with JPEGMafia called Scaring the Hoes. The pair of projects are just another set of W’s for the one-of-akind Detroit-based rapper, whose eccentric rhyme style and production have made the MC stand out in the crowded rap world since before his debut for Fool’s Gold, XXX, more than a decade ago.