The Grey Album was the first album I ever reviewed as a dreamy sophomore in high school. Half little hippy love-child obsessed with the psychedelic sounds of the 60s and half little white boy blasting rap to try and channel my inner black soul, the blend of The Beatles' White Album and Jigga's The Black Album was a God-send. Danger Mouse masterfully looped instrumental sounds from The Beatles most intimate album to accentuate Jay-Z's introspective look at his career in what was supposed to be his farewell to hip-hop.
What Danger Mouse did with the The Grey Album was much deeper than just a cool concept that sounded ill. He took the biggest giant of pop music history -- The Beatles -- and put them on the same platform as the biggest figure in hip-hop history. The result was they each made the other one better. The Beatles not only sounded good with Jay-Z, the album made us realize how edgy these dudes really were. Forty years after the fact, the music is still killing it. Not only that but they were making Jay-Z sound better too. Behind his normal plush, bass driven beats, Jay-Z was a pimp, the man, but not since Reasonable Doubt was he accessible, vulnerable. Yet when Danger Mouse played "December 4th" over a sample of The Beatles' "Mother Nature's Son" Jigga came down to Earth a little, and that's a good thing. Over George Harrison's classic "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," Jay-Z emotion feels that much more raw, his pain real.
Finally, what the album did (for me at least) was it made The Black Album and The White Album that much better. Now that I saw these songs in a different light, I could go back to the originals and understand their complexity all the better. This album changed it all and it still sounds dope. Danger Mouse, damn. This my friends is what a mashup is supposed to do.
The Grey Album - December 4th
The Grey Album - What More Can I Say
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