Brute features samples of the Ferguson protest, an MSNBC report of Occupy Wall Street by Lawrence O'Donnell, and an interview with a former member of the LAPD regarding the power of the police.

"[8] "[Qadiri] is less a beat maker, more a builder of atmospheric soundscapes, twisting choral harmonies with grime bass lines and doomy dubstep effects.

Her conceptual sounds don’t offer blatant, fist pumping anthems for movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter, instead they seem to capture the still, quiet tension that echoes around that space between the battle lines and point to the psychological fear on both sides."

[11] Joseph Burnett of Dusted found it unlike most other grime music in that it is "rarely propulsive or tailored for the dancefloor, but rather shift and shake convulsively under the weight of stark, metronomic beats, swathes of sub-bass and icy synth swirls.

[3] Brute's oppressive vibe comes from the drum parts, specifically how the "rhythms jerk at unnatural angles" and "beats drop like gas canisters," wrote Stephen Worthy of Mixmag.

[13] As Derek Staples of Consequence of Sound wrote, "an ever-lurking, low-end wake" is used to represent an omnipresent police force on songs like “Battery” and “10-34," "volatile harmonic breaks signifying the frequent outbursts of unmitigated violence.

"[13] As Burnett wrote, "Listen carefully, and there is a certain melodicism nestled in the heart of this album, but its tone is despairing and subdued, glimmers of light in a dark and uncaring world.

[4] One of them is a live recording of the Ferguson protests where a policeman says "you are no longer peacefully assembling" through a Long Range Acoustic Device,[4] which is played over an industrial instrumental on the opening track "Endzone.

"[12] Another one is Lawrence O'Donnell's MSNBC report about Occupy Wall Street, which Qadiri chose for his "classic American media news anchor voice,"[3] which is played on the track "Blows.

"[4] The cover art for Brute consists of a photograph of one of the teletubbies altered by Babak Radboy to give it face hair, broken blood vessels, and chapped lips.

"[4] Writing for Hyperallergic, Cynthia Cruz stated, "Like great poetry, her music provides just the right amount of world and politics with her references to protests, news clips and police force while allowing the listener enough space within each song and within the album to make her own connections.

[25] Gosztola summarized that it was "the kind of album that will carry even more resonance in the era of President Donald Trump,"[25] while in a review of the record for Clash magazine, Sofia Leadbetter stated, "Al Qadiri has invoked her own personal brand of protest in a world in which discussion over that right has become ever more charged.

"[14] Gibb's review of Brute discussed how Qadiri used tropes from popular music styles in all of her works, opining that "the overt narrative framings of Brute [and her previous LP Asiatisch (2014)] highlight the way Al Qadiri's work seeks to create collages of themes — a bricolage approach that’s effective in bringing together ideas and allowing them to interact, even if the musical results aren't always as successful.

[21] Resident Advisor's Andrew Ryce wrote that most of the LP's samples were its only parts that distinguished it from previous releases: "Otherwise, we're given titles like "10-34" and "Oubliette," words that gesture towards a theme without providing substance.

"[22] A reviewer for musicOMH called it a "frustrating album" and a "missed opportunity," writing that it "has the ability to unnerve and unsettle to the point of creating a paranoid world for the listener" but too much of the songs are "formless pieces that drift instead of acting as a counterpoint to the oppression that lets Brute down.