Danny Brown And Hannibal Buress Ask The Hard Questions

Make It Nasty
Comedian Hannibal Buress asks Detroit MC Ddanny Brown the hard questions.
Words Dan Buyanovsky

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the July/August 2013 issue of XXL Magazine.

They're both weird but in a good way.

Stand-up comic and Chicago native Hannibal Buress has built a cult following as a comedian's comedian off the strength of his left-field observational humor and deadpan delivery. Meanwhile, 31-year-old Detroit rapper Danny Brown has carved out a niche of his own, stretching his nasally voice around lines about scrapping metal and eating pussy all over backdrops of electro-/U.K. grime-inspired production. Here, the Fool's Gold Records rhymer chops it up with Buress about watching porn, the Gathering Of The Juggalos and No Limit Records.

Hannibal Buress: I saw a video of you at the Gathering Of The Juggalos—I played there a few years ago. It's a crazy place because they have the drug bridge where people just sell and do drugs. Did you see that when you were there?
Danny Brown: You know I saw the drug bridge. [Laughs] They do drugs out in the open there, and they do a lot of other shit in the open, too.

I saw some women with horrible bodies showing their bodies out there.
I saw some good ones, too. Like the weird, alternative porn bodies.

I mean, I watch BBW porn sometimes. I watch BBW, I watch granny and interracial.
[Laughs] All at the same time?

I go from there and see what I can find. What's your porn search word?
I don't really search. I've been on the same site for so many years, so I can just hit "Recommended."

Like the Amazon of porn.
Yeah, but it's creepy because they're just tallying up what you're jerking off to.

I don't know what I'm gonna do when it's time to get wifed, because I'm the only one who browses on my computer.
I actually have two laptops: I have a dirty laptop and a regular laptop. I have a laptop just for doing perverted shit. [Laughs] You never have to wipe your history.

Yeah, but I always worry, like if I die… I wish there was some shit that would wipe my computer history if I died.
[Laughs] Real shit.

So were you a No Limit fan, growing up?
Hell yeah, I was a No Limit fan! I bought every tape they put out. There's tapes that I bought that them motherfuckers couldn't sell to anybody else in their life. My favorite was the Soulja Slim album, but I had every Silkk The Shocker album. Another good one was Mac, Shell Shocked.

If you could get one No Limit feature, who would it be?
I'd get Mo B. Dick, for sure. He's the guy with the ponytail who used to sing the hooks. Like, if you listened to Master P's Ice Cream Man, Mo B. Dick had a song where he was like, "I'm chillin' out without a doubt, I see big booties hangin' out/My dick is getting harder like it's about to pop out of its… sock-et." [Laughs] Mo B. Dick was my nigga.

I always wonder what those people are up to now.
I know. It's crazy because like every No Limit album that dropped at that time was top 5 on Billboard.

That was such a different era… I was in a studio in L.A., and they had some plaques up, and they had Usher's plaque up for Confessions. He did 7 million, man! Nobody does that anymore. It seems like all the money is in the touring game now.
Back in the day, it was harder for rappers to do tours and shows, so they had to sell records. They might do a short promo run, but there weren't any artists like linking up and doing a big tour together or anything like that. And if they did, some shit happened. [Laughs] I remember I went to a No Limit concert, actually, and the shit got shut down as soon as Mystikal got on stage. Everybody just started fighting, throwing chairs.

If we were in a buddy movie, what kind of characters would we be?
I could only be the druggy friend. I'd be the guy that gets you in trouble.

Yeah, and I'd probably work some horrible job in retail, but I'd have big dreams. I could be easily convinced to try a heist or something.

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