Danny Brown is at his best when he’s coming apart at the seams. Sometimes that means peering into his personal hell. On 2013’s superb Old, a B-side suite of frenzied party songs (tailored to have him booked at huge festivals) were qualified by a front half that dropped the Detroit native in the middle of trashed hotel rooms, dodging calls from his daughter, awake for days on end. Earlier, on his national breakthrough XXX, he pushed the physical limits of his delivery, the psychological border of middle age, the accepted way to write a song about cunnilingus. As long as he’s careening in and out of what’s deemed good and proper, Danny Brown is making great music.

“Pneumonia,” the latest single from his forthcoming Atrocity Exhibition, tends toward the XXX side of the ledger. He skips around Evian Christ’s rattling beat, eyeballing broken scales, watching the deer in his front yard, complaining when the coke burns his nose. He says he’ll “slurp that pussy just like lo mein” and that he “licked the clit and she did the Macarena.” Brown remains one of rap’s most vivid writers, and over the years he has only developed better and better control over his distinct, nasally drawl. If “Pneumonia” is to be believed, Atrocity Exhibition will be a series of bad trips and misadventures, but you won’t want to look away.