There have been some heinous hip-hop-guitar and rap-rock collaborations over the years. While Jay-Z and Linkin Park was popular, it was wrong, as was anything Limp Bizkit did. Yet this album - which brings together top rappers like Mos Def and various Wu Tang Clan members, among others, with Dan
Auerbach and Patrick Carney of Ohio blues-rock duo the Black Keys - is inspired and merges the two styles effortlessly.
It helps that the Black Keys are devout Wu Tang fans, and Carney's lucid swaggering beats are especially influenced by the streetwise pimp roll of the Wu. Plus, the Ohio pair also have a good dash of sinister soul in them, too. However, the simple reason this album works is because the two genres are not trying to out do one another. The result is kind of like a hip-hop blues album.
The dark ghetto lilt of Ain't Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo) sidles along beautifully with the slack pounding of the drums and the steely wail of blues; Dollaz and Sense, featuring the apocalyptic vocals of RZA and Pharoahe Monch, is a big bassy stomper, with Auerbach singing like an old bluesman sitting on the porch howling to the night; and the nicely understated What You Do To Me marries a smoky organ with bursts of husky beauty by singer Nicole Wray. And the punchy Done Did It is a tough and fitting end to an inspired album project.
