Danny Brown

At home in the US, Brown is relaxing ahead of his first full European headline tour. He’s looking forward to coming over and hitting London’s West End shops with Carrie Mundane, a fashion designer and MIA’s stylist, who is better known as Cassette Playa. “I just get taken to a whole bunch of places, she [Mundane] take me round Selfridges, tell me to go into this place and buy that, it’s cool.”

Less high on his agenda are the British girls. Brown was recently involved in an incident where he was forcibly given oral sex on stage by a female fan. He can’t discuss it under orders from his publicist and it’s obviously something he’s tired of talking about. However, he’s not so concerned with something similar happening over here.

“UK girls are different from in the US, you don’t get so much one-night stand s***. In the US they are more ratchet, UK girls are more proper.”

Brown is coming to the UK on his Old And Reckless tour to promote his upcoming sophomore release Old. He takes a classic approach to making albums. His last release on the Fool’s Gold label XXX was back in 2011. Since then, there’s been a few EPs, a handful of tracks put out online and the odd guest feature but it’s worked to create a hype around the new material that’s seen Old being put on several summer hot lists.

“I’m meticulous with my s***, it’s why I’m not constantly releasing mixtapes. I could work for a month and make one song or I could make three in half an hour.

“It’s like when a painter sits in front a blank canvas; I could do that for four hours and produce nothing but when the brush hits the canvas I might finish it in ten minutes.”

XXX was hailed as a classic by the music press. SPIN named it their hip-hop album of the year ahead of Kanye West and Jay-Z’s collaboration Watch The Throne and current Guardian favourite Kendrick Lamar’s breakout mixtape Section.80.

XXX has the statement sound and indescribable quality reminiscent in stature to The Streets’s debut Original Pirate Material, something Brown takes as a huge compliment.

Through his distinguishable giggle he squeals, “That makes Old my A Grand Don’t Come For Free.”

The links with the UK don’t end with a comparison to the work of Mike Skinner. Old features production from Paul White, an Englishmen known for his preference for prog and psych; grime beat-maker Darq E Freaker; and Rustie, one of the poster-boys for Glasgow house label Numbers. Alt-pop princess Charlie XCX and rapid-fire London MC Scrufizzer also feature on tracks.

“The album is 60% with UK people. I’m a fan of their sounds and I was growing into that music at the time so we reached out and made it happen.

“With Rustie, my producer Skywalkr’s been into him forever, he sent us some stuff so yeah, we reached out.”

Of all the Old collaborations, it’s working with Canadian synth-pop duo Purity Ring that Brown is most excited about.

“I’ve never worked with anyone that intensely, it’s been emails going back and forth saying ‘What about this bit? Why don’t we change that bit.’”

Meticulous is an adjective Brown uses a lot. With Purity Ring, it sounds as if he found someone else he recognised his own levels of musical scrutiny in and he’s a big fan of their Juno award-winning album Shrines.

There are two themes that run through all of Brown’s output, the first is enjoyment.

“At the end of the day I want to keep this to be fun for me. I went into the album [Old] with that mindset. I don’t wanna get to a point where making music feels like work.”

The second is his drive to be different. It started with his childhood. His father was a house DJ so he wasn’t raised on the same music as many of his contemporaries (he’s previously cited Love’s Forever Changes as the best record ever made). A young Brown also had a penchant for watching Mr Bean.

“Living in Detroit we were able to get the Canadian channels, I used to stay up late and watch that stuff, you know Mr Bean, Monty Python…” he says, giggling again.

“I’ve definitely got the Mr Bean movie lying around somewhere.”

The idea of any other big US rappers getting the speechless humour of Rowan Atkinson is utterly absurd. With Brown it’s entirely believable.