To a certain degree, we should all be very scared of The Blackroc Project – on the whole, previous hybrid hip-hop/rock collaborations have been awful (Jay-Z and Linkin Park? It took sometime for Jay-Z to get around that career ‘blip’). Still, thinking (way) back to the Judgement Night soundtrack, reminds me that not all attempts have been bad.
And thinking about it, the Black Keys are probably the blackest white band we know. They play the blues like Zeppelin might have had they stayed truer to its roots; so while a Black Keys hip hop album might sound like a crazy idea, the material shows that it works.
It helps that the project has a roster of MC’s that could probably make a polka/hip hop album work – RZA, Raekwon, ODB, Mos Def, Q Tip, Ludacris, Pharoahe Monch…it’s almost overwhelming. Almost.
To be fair, blues fans might wonder what the hell this album means. Hip hop heads will probably just love it.
More info can be found at Blakroc.com, and some youtube searching will turn up a bunch of samples for your listening pleasure.
