Here’s the short story. One DJ takes two very different albums and throws them together to form something altogether new. The Beatles White Album meets Jay-Z’s Black Album on DJ Dangermouse’s independently released Grey Album. But is it good?
The Grey Album is pretty badass… though it’s more of a mashup than a remix. The production quality is what you’d expect from an enterprising independent, which is to say that the potential and the inspiration matters far more than the product. For EMI to see this album as a threat to The Beatles legacy is appalling. DJ Dangermouse surely isn’t making much from this at all, and I don’t think stealing was his intention. Like all of the mashups from the last few years, it shows us where music will be going in the next ten or twenty years. Cliched as this might sound, this is the future. The Grey Album is exactly the kind of thing that would’ve made John Lennon smile and nod his head. And George Harrison had copyright issues of his own with The Shirelles and “He’s So Fine.”
So download it already. If you listen and fail to like, delete.
(Not to be confused with The Greyscale, which is just as funky, though not being censored by EMI.)
