Mother Nature's son, I got 99 problems but a glass onion

The beats on Jay-Z's victory-lap Black Album were mostly negligible, and a few producers have unofficially replaced them with their own. The Grey Album, from Atlanta's DJ Danger Mouse, is the most ambitious remix: All the music behind Hova is sampled from the Beatles' White Album.

photo: Maya Hayuk

Hova-di, hova-da, life goes on.

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DJ Danger Mouse
The Grey Album
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• The Beatles
• Jay-Z
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Hip-Hop and Rap

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Of course it's a gimmick, but about half of it works anyway. Sometimes Danger Mouse keeps things simple—"What More Can I Say" simply loops the first eight bars of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," whose single-note piano intro abruptly sounds like a thug classic. And sometimes he gets fancy, as with the splintered cutup of "Julia" that spatters "Dirt off Your Shoulder." The Beatles' tone-conscious arrangements pay off even as cross-sectional samples: At the risk of rockism, I'd say "Change Clothes" feels 40 times fresher over a sped-up harpsichord from "Piggies" and some Pro-Tooled Ringo than with the Neptunes' dozy synths.

But The Grey Album is less a statement about the state of hip-hop production than proof that the right software can now make anything sound like it belongs with anything else. Suggestion for a sequel: Metallica's Black Album and Joan Didion reading The White Album.