The Grey Album
- Danger Mouse
- Band Name: Danger Mouse
- Record Label: [self released]
- Release Date: Feb 3, 2004
- Critic Score
- Most active
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- Most clicked
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For what it is, for what it does, for what it represents and for exposing the idiocy of people who only care about 'what it earns us', then, a truly, TRULY great pop record.
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A startlingly, shockingly wonderful piece of pop art. [19 Mar 2004, p.64]
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100While the novelty factor alone makes it worth the download time, it works as a cohesive album long after the initial shock wears off. [Apr 2004, p.91]
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90One of the year's best releases, remix or not. [#241, p.71]
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80[Makes] two known quantities thrillingly new. [May 2004, p.101]
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Dangermouse's actions have breathed creative life back into a 35-year-old record while inventing a completely new work of hip-hop art.
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80Each of the 12 tracks on the Grey Album is finely tuned -- the precision cut-and-paste sampling DM exhibits is often mind-blowing.
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The diversity of the mixes on The Grey Album also is a testament to how carefully Danger Mouse has cut and pasted together his unauthorized sonic pastiche.
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77While The Grey Album is truly one of the more interesting pirate mashups ever done, it ultimately fails at the hands of perfectionism with several pieces sounding rushed to beat some other knucklehead to his clever idea.
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75The concept does start to wear thin towards the end of the CD, and the recontextualized product is inherently one sided: it's the Beatles' soundtrack that is made to dance around Jay-Z's unedited verses.
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70This'll retain its heat only until everyone's heard it. [Apr 2004, p.88]
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The Grey Album isn’t much more than a well-executed novelty, nor does it illuminate some genius hidden deep within The Black Album.
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There are certainly more fun moments than not, at the very least rendering The Grey Album enjoyable, but it’s hard to argue for any reason other than its novelty.
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The Beatles don't meet Jay-Z as equals; they're sliced and diced, the innate musicality of their work all but compromised into nothingness, into vaguely familiar square pegs crammed into the comparatively round holes of Jay-Z's original vocals.
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50He can't seem to decide whether he wants to make a straightforward hip-hop remix of Jay-Z's tunes, quirky sampladelia like DJ Steinski or Coldcut, or an avant-garde project in the vein of plunderphonic composers John Oswald and Negativland. A lot of the time, he falls awkwardly between the three camps.
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Of course it's a gimmick, but about half of it works anyway.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 25 out of 31
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Mixed: 0 out of 31
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Negative: 6 out of 31
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GMoney10
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AnonY.0
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GregM.10Either love it or leave it alone.