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Watch Danny Brown’s Brilliantly Bleak ‘Side B (Dope Song)’

Danny Brown, "Side B (Dope Song)," 'Old' video

Danny Brown’s “Side B (Dope Song)” music video pulls off the neat trick of being almost as ambivalent and harrowing as the song itself. On Brown’s Essential new album, Old, the track starts off with what is positioned as the more hedonistic side of the album, but the rapper never shies away from the grim self-destructive impulses that can lie beneath the buzz. Director Laurent Briet, who has worked with Beyoncé, here follows Brown through his blighted Detroit hometown with occasional wavy visual effects, but it’s impressive how the clip avoids either glamorizing or decrying that intoxicated state. Just as “Dope Song” toys with its title phrase — “not my last dope song, but my last dope song,” Brown claims — the video (via Complex) manages to indulge in some trippiness while still maintaining a disconcertingly hollowed-out color palette. The video starts with Brown cruising in the passenger seat of a Cadillac; it ends with the vehicle being junked.