Before Danny Brown will speak on the record, he wants some “Pee-wee.” What he means, as he squawks the melody from “Tequila,” by the Champs, is the round blue bottle of Don Julio he produces from his black leather backpack. The 35-year-old rapper moves his 6’2” frame in a lanky, significantly slower rendition of Paul Reubens' spastic barroom dance from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. When he drinks from the bottle, his Adam’s apple elevators up and down in his throat like a cartoon. It’s not quite 2 p.m. on a Monday and this isn’t a bar; it’s the Corktown neighborhood in his birthplace of Detroit. Outside of an old church that currently houses a recording studio called Assemble Sound, Danny dances in the sunshine hitting the sidewalk. He’s ready now.

Those who have followed his career know that there’s no rushing Danny, real name Daniel Sewell, anymore. Success eluded him for so long, the struggle for it became the dominant theme of his career, giving his work an unhinged, obsessive quality. He spent a tumultuous decade trying to make it, including eight months in county lockup after violating his parole following an arrest for loitering with possession of marijuana. Couple that with numerous Greyhound trips to New York in pursuit of a G-Unit Records deal that never materialized, and Danny’s life hasn’t been easy. “I spent so much time trying to kill myself out of depression for not being where I wanted to be in life,” he says.

You can’t rush him now because he’s relishing his success. The result is his latest album Atrocity Exhibition (out now), which he spent years writing. Sonically it follows dissimilar threads of inspiration, from Joy Division to ghettotech. Lyrically, it documents frustration and other disquieting feelings while also taking a hard look at the youth-driven industry he ostensibly exists within.

On the most memorable songs from the uncertain chapter of his life, there's a level of reckless determination that makes him seem nearly alien. On “30,” the final song on his breakthrough 2011 mixtape XXX, it sounds like his quest to become a rapper has driven him mad. The song, composed of just one verse, opens in typical Danny fashion, with a crude and clever joke—“Sent ya bitch a dick pic and now she needs glasses”—before boiling over into a berserk defense of his existence. Over discordant synths, Danny’s voice transforms from his trademark shrill sing-song into a hoarse snarl, like his voice is bottoming out alongside his life:

I never learned to rap, always knew how

Ever since a nigga 8, knew what I would do now

When I turned 28, they’re like What you gon’ do now?

And now a nigga 30, so I don’t think ya heard me,

That the last 10 years I been so fucking stressed

Tears in my eyes, let me get this off my chest

The thoughts of no success got a nigga chasing death

Doing all these drugs, hope I OD’ing next, triple X.

“30” is one of the great rap performances of 2011, if not the decade. The same year he released it, he signed with A-Trak’s New York boutique label Fool’s Gold. Two years later, the label put out his proper debut, Old, which balanced disturbing memories of his traumatic childhood with his darkly comic wit. Danny's warped humor and fondness for sex and illegal substances led A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad to call him the hip-hop Richard Pryor.

Danny is now living comfortably in a suburban home about 40 minutes outside of Detroit with his longtime girlfriend and two cats. He runs with Eminem rep Paul Rosenberg’s Goliath Management and has signed with storied English indie label Warp, known best as the home of experimental electronic acts like Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada. The stakes are no longer life or death. He made it—meaning he’s free to play around and make a record driven by something other than fear of aging out of the rap game. But if you’re looking for caffeinated party starters like “Dip” or “Handstand”—staples of his popular festival sets—you’ll need to go elsewhere. A strange engine powers this new project.