AR: The Grey Album

Danger Mouse - The Grey Album (2004)

There are three things to note about The Grey Album, Danger Mouse's year-later underground mash-up of Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' eponymous (and legendary) White Album. The first is that it's, um, an extraordinarily dark version of "grey," maybe 85% Black and 15% White. This is nothing resembling an even blend of the albums; it's Jay-Z's album with different backing beats. What Danger Mouse has primarily done is taken prominent snippets of Beatles tunes, isolated some Beatles hand-claps, other sound effects and Ringo drumbeats and used them in place of the various samples and drum-sounds from Jay-Z's disc. The tracks are appropriately titled after the Jay-Z songs as these are essentially "alternate mixes" of the Jay-Z originals. This is all well and good and makes sense; doing the reverse hardly would have worked. But it is decidedly not the marriage that is is sometimes made out to be, and it is not even a case of the Beatles playing back-up band to Jay-Z's lead; it's really Beatles sounds cut and resequenced into a very idiosyncratic drum machine for the HOVA.

The second thing to note is that it's 85% The Black Album in a different sense - strangely, the entire disc is not represented. Jay-Z's "The Threat" is cut from the proceedings, and "Lucifer" doesn't really get the full treatment but is instead sliced to bits right along with the Beatles music in an homage to "Revolution 9." The order of tracks is also rearranged. None of these decisions is a death blow to the project, but they are collectively odd - there's a sense that the omitted tunes were "too tough" or that Danger Mouse was in a hurry to get the mashup out there. I definitely feel a little cheated by the proceedings, and wonder if another couple goes with the PC Tools would have given a more complete experience.

The third thing is that there are two general mashing tendencies on this album - the first is to use a very recognizable riff from The White Album and loop it underneath Jay-Z's raps. The following songs primarily feature this technique:

"PSA" uses "Long, Long, Long"
"What More Can I Say" uses "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
"Encore" uses first "Glass Onion" and then "Savoy Truffle"
"December 4th" uses "Mother Nature's Son"
"99 Problems" uses "Helter Skelter"
"Change Clothes" uses "Piggies"
"Justify My Thug" uses "Rocky Raccoon"
"My First Song" uses the "Can you take me back where I came from" outro of "Cry Baby Cry" before falling into a "Savoy Truffle" breakdown

Like I said, "primarily;" these tunes certainly feature other crafty touches. But because a "riff" (for lack of a better term) is used so prominently, these songs more lend themselves to making me wish I was listening to either the Jay-Z or the Beatles tune individually (with a couple of exceptions). The second technique, imho, is more successful. On these tunes, Danger Mouse took the original Beatles' sounds and so rearranged them that the timbre is definitely of Fab Four lineage, but the song itself is not:

"Dirt Off Your Shoulder" uses a frenetic obliteration of "Julia"
"Moment of Clarity" uses an equally chopped to pieces sampling of "Happiness is a Warm Gun"

The effect is to give a dream-like sense of the Beatles without that explicit quote of a particular line. It's a step more interesting than the former technique both in sound and in the fact that it presents a stronger challenge to the EMI copyright claims - it's one thing to say that a riff is intellectual property, but rearranged samples of what are essentially frequencies? That sounds like a stronger "fair use" case to me, though I can't pretend to be expert in the proceedings.

With those three "things" on the table, I ask two questions: 1, what, if any, of these songs are improved by this treatment, and 2, is The Grey Album really listenable (in whole or in part) , or just interesting as an experiment? Well, let's address the blasphemous question first - are any of the Beatles songs improved?

"NO!" you reply in genetic reflex!

Not so fast. I put forth for your consideration that "Piggies" has found its appropriate place in the universe as a rap sample. It's one of the stranger and painfully unsubtle tunes of the White Album, and the work it does on "Change Clothes" is tremendous. The baroque runs fit great as a "huh?" loop, and the absence of cannibalistic pig lyrics suits me just fine. [Pause]. Okay, okay, I won't go so far as to say it's better, just that it is doing just fine in this role. Cool? The only other thing that stands close is the conversion of "Savoy Truffle" into a looped boogie at the end of "My First Song;" it's not so much an improvement as an impressive use of such a short sample. Otherwise, fear not Beatles fans; the sacred is still sacred.

The more on point q is whether any of these Jay-Z alternatives are superior to their originals. As stated, "Change Clothes" is cool in its new skin and stands exceptionally well next to its BA counterpoint. It was already a good song, and this take might make it that much catchier. "Encore" works really well with the rock riffs, though doesn't necessarily improve on its original. The big work was done on "Moment of Clarity," which is just plain better in its Beatles take, and "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," a song whose offbeat sliced-and-diced Julia sample sounds so different than the Timbaland laserbeams that the song is reborn. The mashup as a whole is generally successful in that each song lined up on its new beats works, but these tunes in particular are head-turners and a solid defense of the form.

The latter q, though, is trickier. While this album is easy to appreciate for its technical precision and ambition, I'd humbly submit that the fat majority of the songs are WAY better on The Black Album. That is perhaps to be expected, but with so much of the Grey consisting of Jay-Z's raps stripped straight off, it's hard for me to conceptualize listening to this Danger Mouse work as something other than a novelty act. The tunes, especially the strongest ones, were great on Jay-Z's cut, and hearing them here gives me that nagging feeling of listening to a live album where everything is *just* off the studio version, not enough to make it better but enough to make it distracting. Like I stated, that's strongly qualified - there are a handful of songs that breathe well here, and the project as a whole is an undoubted success. But I like to think of The Grey Album as evidence of the skills that Danger Mouse will utilize in albums to come. So for now, I will keep my darks and lights separate while remembering that Grey is worth hearing a couple of times just to admire the bridge of highly disparate artists.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Change Clothes"