Review: Danny Brown @ Nile Theater

Apologies for the late review! The semester is coming to an end and I’ve been drowning in assignments that I need to complete. Nevertheless, this doesn’t take away from my excitement to talk about my experience seeing Danny Brown perform at the Nile Theater in Mesa on April 8th! 

There were three openers for the show that definitely aligned with Danny’s audience: DJ Ralphy, Bruiser Wolf, and Alice Longyu Gao who opened the show and presented new material for us to hear. I haven’t heard of DJ Ralphy and Bruiser Wolf before but they had a lot of great music to perform.

DJ Ralphy played a lot of house mixes and switched to synthwave sounds that gave me hints of Flying Lotus during his Captain Murphy era. It felt super nostalgic to hear the similarities! He assisted with the next performance which came from Bruiser Wolf. When Bruiser came on stage, I could already tell that he was a charismatic old-head, especially with his Slick-Rick shirt. Again, I haven’t heard anything from him before, I just knew that he was featured in “Y.B.P.” in Danny’s latest album Quaranta. His raunchy lyrics was delivered in a tone that honestly reminded me of Boosty Collins talking funk-like which was super interesting to hear. I don’t even know if I could call his hooks clean per se. Just listen to his stuff- it’s pretty wild. He performed a lot of songs from his latest album “My Story Got Stories”. 

The last opener that night was Alice Longyu Gao. I actually looked forward to seeing her perform since I’m familiar with her music. She had a whole set up, playing a harp and using her own mixer during her performance which caught everyone off-guard. She definitely had a vision for her performance, playing mostly songs from her debut album “Let’s Hope Heteros Fail, Learn and Retire” which has a mixture of hardcore and hyper pop. I enjoyed her performance a lot! She even played some unreleased work! Overall, I would say that the openers did really well and gave their all to keep the crowd interested and engaged.

Finally, came Danny Brown. Once he got on stage, he immediately started performing. He immediately hyped the crowd! He looked so ominous wearing a purple robe but he later took that off (I don’t know why he wore that, honestly). 

I wasn’t sure what this tour was for since Danny Brown played a little bit of everything from his discography. He played some classics like Grown Up and Really Doe to his newer hits like Burfict!. He did perform some of his work from Quaranta and got Bruiser Wolf to join him in performing “Y.B.P.” which was fun to see live. Regardless of what the tour was actually dedicated to, I’m glad to have witnessed him perform most of his popular songs live! I have a video of myself in the crowd during Burfict! which I’ll share below. You’ll see how energetic the crowd was for yourself!

This was my first time watching a show at the Nile Theater. It’s a cute little venue that was able to contain a show like this pretty well. It didn’t feel cramped and it’s probably one of the only venues that actually has those giant ceiling fans which kept me reasonably cooled. Just to compare how thankful I am: I saw Death Grips at the Rialto a while ago and was literally wringing sweat out of my shirt after the show. 

Note: I want to thank our Head Music Director George Romero for giving me this awesome opportunity to see Danny Brown for KAMP! I highly suggest seeing Danny Brown live if you ever get a chance. He doesn’t disappoint!