Danny Brown has found himself in a Twitter beef after he posted a photo from his gig last week in Melbourne to Instagram.
The picture he used was taken by Melbourne-based photographer Michelle Grace Hunder for Howl & Echoes. Editor Lauren Ziegler then sent a DM to Brown, asking him to credit the photographer.
Rather than just simply crediting Hunder’s photo, Brown took down the photo and responded to the request with: “How bout i just deleted them since of guys are so butt hurt”.
Following that, Project U Content Director Nic Kelly posted the conversation to his own account, with the tagline; “Gross to see @dannyxbrownx disrespecting music photographers on a major level. Tagging ain’t hard bro”.
Gross to see @xdannyxbrownx disrespecting music photographers on a major level. Tagging ain’t hard bro. pic.twitter.com/WwV2mcpusf
— NIC KELLY (@nicwkelly) May 1, 2016
Brown responded by essentially blaming the photographer for taking photos that he “didn’t ask” for.
To say things started getting out of hand after that would be a massive understatement. Kelly pointed out that Brown and his management were in fact the ones that approved the photographers.
https://twitter.com/nicwkelly/status/726785559801159680
Then, logically, Brown decided that the next course of action was that the two should punch on – even telling him where his hotel was so that Kelly could “pull up”.
Brown has since deleted everything he posted, with his management presumably intervening, but not before Kelly copped numerous threats from Brown’s sizable fan base.
“I’m wearing a hat today so I don’t get bashed on the street,” Kelly tells Music Feeds. He found it confusing that calling Brown out on the photo escalated to being told to pull up for a fight. “I found (the tweets) more amusing than threatening,” said Kelly. “Rap acts often have a fan base that is quite boisterous and loud, the support from them – that was also threatening.”
The whole thing had originally been brought to Kelly’s attention when Michelle Hunder had posted a screenshot showing Brown using her photo without crediting it. “I saw that and then used my platform to go ‘yo, this isn’t right’,” said Kelly “It’s such a simple concept to literally tag them (the photographer) in an Instagram post.”
For Kelly, the issue of accreditation goes deeper than just one photo being acknowledged as the creative material of another individual; “It’s really important for creatives to support other creatives because they’re such political and competitive industries. People going out there to do their best work every single night deserve to be credited for that work.
“Danny’s got quite a platform, quite a loud voice,” said Kelly. “Him supporting the work of another creative would have a really good affect for [his] career.” For a photographer on the wrong end of it, “it could mean the difference between failure and survival in [the] industry.
“It was just tweet, delete and go,” Kelly revealed – when asked if Brown’s management had been in contact. “I woke up at seven this morning and the tweets were gone. I doubt his management will get in touch, I doubt they’ll be apologetic about this”.
Check out the rest of Brown’s tweets, below.
Clarification: Story has been edited to clarify that it was in fact Howls & Echoes editor Lauren Ziegler, not Nic Kelly, who originally contacted Danny Brown.
