With only a scattershot of guest verses and a handful of live shows in the past 12 months, he was always going to be a bit rusty. And so it proved, with skipped lyrics, messed up choruses and quite a bit of confused banter with his DJ.
At one point during Danny Brown's first headlining New Zealand show, the Michigan MC owned up to the fact he "couldn't remember the second verse" to one of his most well known songs Kush Coma, admitting he felt like he'd smoked a little too much of his favoured strain of weed.
Brown at least looked every inch the part, arriving on the Powerstation stage with gold chains dangling over a leather jacket, his sunglasses reflecting a bourbon glass held in one hand while he greeted his up-for-it fans by cackling into the microphone in the other.
His chaotic attitude to live shows sort of suits him - Brown's wild hair, rock star 'tude and frenzied rapping style comes on like a hip-hop speedball, especially during the set's more frenetic moments - the sick sex anthem Break It or the chest beater Dope Song.
And Brown's certainly not short of charisma: his chipmunk rhymes, glinted smile and bonkers dance moves pitch him as the Miley Cyrus of hip-hop - especially when he ripped through his "toes on the wall" twerking anthem Express Yourself.
