DJ Danger Mouse -- The Grey AlbumNo Record LabelJanuary/February 2004
Sometimes the most visionary ideas come out when you're just fooling around. But make no mistake: DJ Danger Mouse's triumph, The Grey Album, is no accident. It's a painstakingly and masterfully engineered experiment, and the results are brilliant.
Danger Mouse's output up to this point (two EPs on the indie label Lex) qualifies him as an all-but-unknown hip-hop turntablist and producer, but his latest project is apt to change all that. The Grey Album is a remix of Jay-Z's Black Album that sounds, quite literally, how it would turn out if the Fab Four played backup to the Brooklyn gangster's lyrics. It seems DM got his hands on an acappela version of Jay-Z's record, then set it to instrumentals and beats that he cut and pasted together from the Beatles' White Album. The record is only available via download on the internet.
"Danger Mouse insists he can explain and prove that all the music on The Grey Album can be traced back to the White Album and its musical content via sampling," says the DJ's website. "Every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles' White Album and is in their original recording somwhere."
On his own record, the chemistry between DM's production and Jay-Z's voice is explosive. "99 Problems," the Rick Rubin-produced house rocker of The Black Album is set to the stinging, raw, guitar grind of "Helter Skelter." The feel is totally different, but at times, the remix sounds better than the original. The juxtaposition of Jay's bad-ass "Justify My Thug" with the contrived twang of "Rocky Raccoon" is an improvement on DJ Quik's gangster-thumping. "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" sounds similarly delicate in contrast to Jay's voice when set to the trebly guitar accompaniment of the Beatles' "Julia" and an intricately-pieced-together breakbeat.
Danger Mouse's website, with appropriately Jay-Z-like braggadocio, claims that the Grey Album "is a unique hybrid via two of the most important musical and cultural forces ever." And while it might seem a stretch to level such an accolade on Jay-Z (even though he has undoubtedly dominated New York rap since the late nineties), that's not really the point. The genius in the matching of these two "cultural forces" is that where everyone from your sister to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame asserts the Beatles' relevance, Jay-Z asserts his own importance with equal bravery. So when he chants, "There's never been a nigga this good for this long," over the jangly minor chords of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and DM's throaty bounce of a beat, it evokes that whole intangible continuum of pop music that we music writers like to talk about ("If it weren't for so-and-so, Run-DMC wouldn't be around..." etc.) in colors more vivid than we're used to seeing. Colors brighter that black and white. But more importantly, Danger Mouse is a producer more talented than we're used to hearing. So turn it up.
