Danger Mouse & Black Thought - Cheat Codes (2022, BMG)
conscious hip-hop \ boom bap \ abstract hip-hop \ jazz rap
Producer Danger Mouse and rapper Black Thought have both made careers out of bridging cultural gaps. Danger Mouse first broke big as a producer with 2004’s The Grey Album, his mashup of vocals from JAY-Z’s then-swan song The Black Album with the instrumentals from the Beatles’ self-titled ninth full-length—colloquially known as The White Album. The Grey Album’s success led to production work with rappers like CeeLo Green—with whom he released two albums as the soul group Gnarls Barkley—and the late MF DOOM, as well as indie-rock polymaths like Damon Albarn and Beck. Black Thought, meanwhile, is a 30-year rap veteran and lead MC of the Roots who draws connections between capos, politicians, and pop culture in ruthless freestyles as often as he soothes and tickles audiences on The Tonight Show and Sesame Street. They each use music to bend time and history to their respective wills, finding the playful and the profane in every space they occupy.
But regardless of its scope, Danger Mouse and Black Thought bring good things out of each other. At Cheat Codes’ best, it’s electrifying to see the ways their respective obsessions with history and time inform the whole. Over the strobing synths and strings of “Saltwater,” Black Thought claims he’ll be “over 70 flipping the script regularly” before comparing himself to the late actor and activist Dick Gregory. Like that song, the album feels both modern and vintage—a swirl of distant touchstones happening all at once.
#fckem_hiphop #fckem_jazzhop #fckem_abstracthop
