Producer Danger Mouse and emcee Black Thought have both created jobs from bridging cultural holes. Danger Mouse first burst huge as a maker with 2004’s The Grey Album, his merging of lyrics from JAY-Z’s then-swan music The Black Album with The tunes from The Beatles ‘self-titled ninth full-length — known colloquially as The White Album. The Grey Album’s success led to production work with artists like CeeLo Green — with whom he made three songs as The Heart team Grimm Barkley — and The long MF DOOM, and also indie-rock polymaths like Damon Albarn and Beck. Black Thought, meantime, is a 30-year music senior and direct MC of the Roots who highlights relationships between Capos and improvisational drumming, lawmakers, and pop culture in brutal freestyles as much as he relaxes and amuses viewers on The Tonight Show and Sesame Street. They products song twist period and past to their relevant Williams, discovering the fun and the forbidden in each area they dominate.
The set had known each other as kindred spirits as far back as The mid- ’90s. After working together around what could ultimately be a hokey bonus track for Danger Mouse and DOOM’s Adult Swim partnership, The Mouse and The Mask, 2005’s production for Deadman, They start assembling an album initially known as Dangerous Thoughts. Crowded plans eventually forced them to hold the project for more than a century: Danger Mouse created the twin Broken Bells with James Mercer of the Shins and created songs for the Black Keys and Karen O’Connell, whereas Black Thought fixed into his position as Jimmy Fallon’s band leader and started his Streams of Thought EP set in 2018. After numerous missteps, the Jeep finally reached the finish line with their first full-length song, today entitled Cheat Codes. Their trust in each other is well established, reproduction a dozen songs of strong music, bare-bones hip-hop.
A romance at work in their respective careers is unique since they’re reaching out from different ends. The three books of Streams of Thought have produced Black Thought extra inventive as a vocalist than ever; but Danger Mouse has worked brilliantly with artists since The Mouse and The Mask, he hasn’t created an entire orchestral album for nearly 20 years. Fortunately, they have natural science. Mouse falls home into blurry channels that are comfortable to audiences of his ancient music jobs, although it’s generally less fun than you may think. Every once in a while Tongue-in-cheek motifs pop up, like the jangly instrument bite irritating against the beautifully percussion “No Gold Teeth” or the update of beat croons on the rack of “Strangers.” On “Saltwater” he yet takes a stab at the sloping melodic associated with Griselda to accept host Conway the Machine. But some of these are surpassed by standard boom-bap, beautiful but not particularly exciting.
Playing opening song “Sometimes” that turns a sleep of melody, music, instrumentation, and melancholy lyrics into a sanctuary for Black Thought to draw sections throughout Black history: “Images of grandeur from Jamel Shabazz, Dapper Dan/Clap your hands whether you’re in Paterson or Pakistan/Richard Wright, the son of, A Black boy who grew into a Black man.” Black Thought’s moves are much more tight than that of a musician like DOOM, the vowel number and meter stage through sizes, and the surpassed mirror his slow position. This puts as much focus on his speech as his method, and Black Thought remains to put his face to music. On “The Darkest Part” and “Aquamarine” He clicks in to the power too with his popular Hot 97 medley to switch Public Enemy examples and the consistent challenges of science and religion into short metaphors of protection. Here’s a ring to Black Thought’s rich sound that increases the song’s sense of scale, if he declares his perfection from the cliffs or combing through self pain on a song like “Identical Deaths.”
And so far, as interesting as this endeavor was indeed, there’s a sense that everything could have remained stronger, extra significan. Some music are crippled by the decision to turn Black Thought’s lyrics down in the combination. Often, it gives the tone a haunting emotional that helps the tone ( “Because of the lack of English, Spanish can speak”). Side twice, he sounds like he’s listening to audio while he’s 10 feet away from the headset ( “The Darkest Part” “Strangers”). Black Thought has gone on record as saying that Cheat Codes isn’t another introduction in the Streams of Thought set, but the music is just so hierarchically and narratively similar to that set, it’s often hard to see the variation. The long and almost two-decade incubat — that is, given the particulars, contributed to an awesome retrospective DOOM passage “Belize” This would comfortably fit as a stream of Thought: Vol. 4.
But despite its focus, Danger Mouse and Black Thought bring good stuff out of each other. Cheat Codes Perfect!, It’s exciting to see their relevant preoccupations with the past and the period tell the whole story. Over the haloing synthesizers and lines “Saltwater” Black Thought asserts he’ll feel “Over 70 flipping the script regularly” before contrasting himself to the long performer and protestor Dick Gregory. I Like this music, the album feels both present and classic — a twist of remote signifiers occurring simultaneously.
