So have you all heard about this? A guy named DJ Dangermouse took Jay-Z's
The Black Album and mixed it with The Beatles'
The Beatles (AKA
The White Album) to create
The Grey Album (clever, eh?).
While the album has received limited distribution, EMI has rightfully served DJ Dangermouse with a cease-and-desist, as he's illegally using the Beatles catalogue.
I downloaded the album last night. I gotta say, it's very interesting. For me, it makes listening to Jay-Z relatively tolerable.
Anybody else heard it?
Here's some information from an
MTV Article:
Quote:
Of all the remixes, the most talked about lately and one of the most interesting in concept is The Grey Album, from Los Angeles producer Danger Mouse. Like most good ideas, it's deceptively simple: take Jay-Z's The Black Album and layer its vocals over one of rock's most ambitious musical masterpieces, the Beatles' The White Album.
Over two and a half weeks in December, Danger Mouse engineered new beats culled from the sounds of The White Album, cribbing drum hits, plundering piano loops and stealing guitar riffs before meshing them into recognizable but recontextualized riffs. "For me, it was an obvious thing to do," Danger Mouse said. "I'm a big Jay-Z fan. Always have been. Same thing with the Beatles. ... And once I got the idea to do this, I had to do it before anyone else."
What makes The Grey Album so ambitious is how Danger Mouse engineered the beats to fit the personalities of the original songs. On The Black Album's "What More Can I Say," Jay-Z reflects on his success, seemingly already nostalgic about his top-of-the-hill status on what is ostensibly his retirement album. On The Grey Album, Danger Mouse renders the same sentiment by flipping the shuffling drums and mournful piano of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."
The Rick Rubin-produced "99 Problems" framed Jay-Z's boastful bravado with beats that resurrected rap's early homage to rock breaks. The Grey Album's version does the same thing, using the sneering guitars of "Helter Skelter."
"You can throw an a cappella over the beat and as long as they're the same [time], it'll somewhat match. But it doesn't mean it'll feel natural," Danger Mouse explained. "I didn't want it to sound that kind of way. I wanted to make sure I had the feelings of the song."
What The Grey Album also has seemed to do is open up Jay-Z to rock fans in a way that his street-reared, club-ready anthems have not. And it may do the same for rap fans who didn't know they liked the Beatles.
"I love the Beatles, but nobody knows that there's breaks in there," said Chad Hugo of the Neptunes, who produced two songs on The Black Album. After hearing The Grey Album for the first time, he nodded in approval. "This is dirty," he said.
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