Very rarely do small homegrown projects stand outside the realm of short-lived novelty. When I first heard about The Grey Album I cringed; well not so much cringed, rather, I had my doubts. Sampling The Beatles White Album with the vocals from Jay-Z’s Black Album--while a very creative idea--could have been pulled off atrociously. However, surprisingly enough, Danger Mouse has pulled off this idea quite adeptly.
As I said, The Grey Album in its concept alone is very creative. Danger Mouse, a virtually unknown California DJ took various samples from The White Album and mixed them with them the recently released vocals from Jay Z’s supposed final album, The Black Album. The combination of white and black is, well, grey (in a pigment sense only, if we were talking about varying wavelengths of light, it does get kind of tricky), hence The Grey Album. Danger Mouse then had three thousand “promotional” copies sent out, but not having asked the permission of either Jay Z or whoever holds the rights to the Beatles catalog these days, he was quickly sent a cease and desist order from Sony.
The Grey Album is not perfect, but given the homemade nature of it, the remixes more than make up for their weaknesses. Danger Mouse took what boils down to three or four bars of the tracks and put them on a loop for each track. At times the loops are manipulated whether it be a drum bridge or an extra bar from another part in the song. Overall, however, the loops are pretty consistent through the entirety of each song. Although this can get mundane and repetitive, it is really only a minor overall weakness. Obviously, the beats and vocals occasionally do not match up. One expects this in a project of this nature but at times as others have complained, it did seem a little rushed. The other main problem with the album lies in the poor mixing and overall sound, which seems to be overtly heavy on the bass. Nonetheless, these weaknesses do not overshadow the remix’s ingenuity.
The strongest point of The Grey Album was the actual choice of samples for each song. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is excellently mixed with the vocals for “What More Can I Say” in the album’s best track. Regardless of the minor quips I have with the album, the fact of the matter is that this album is incredibly enjoyable to listen to. Danger Mouse has creatively taken samples from a classic and used them to make a really catchy rap remix album. The flaws are very easy to look past.
Unfortunately this album is becoming harder and harder to find. Sony’s legal action was swift and no more than those initial three thousand CDs were released. While I can see the heavy legal ramifications of their actions (given that no one granted permission to do this) it is a shame that this is not seeing a wider release. The Grey Album is one of the most creative remix projects I have seen.
