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.