Where Brian Burton goes, I will follow. He successfully mashed up two of my favorite artists on “The Grey Album”. He produced one of the best albums in Beck Hansen’s career full of great albums. He joined forces with Cee-Lo to create Gnarls Barkley, the most commercially successful project in the career of the artist who set the black weirdo blueprint for Andre Benjamin. Let’s not forget about Dangerdoom. Now, the man more commonly known as Danger Mouse has teamed up with James Mercer of The Shins for a project called Broken Bells. I resisted the opportunity to listen to the album in full online pre-release, I don’t really appreciate a piece of music unless it comes with something I can hold in my hand and look at, but there’s no way this can’t be good, right?
(random observation: if Kevin Spacey and Dave Matthews had a baby, it would look like James Mercer).
Mr. Mouse also sat behind the boards for the last Gorillaz album, “Demon Days”. The Damon Albarn-fronted project turned out to be a huge hit and garnered De La Soul (a contender for best hip-hop group EVER) their first, well-deserved Grammy award for the hit single “Feel Good, Inc.”. De La return on “Plastic Beach”, Gorillaz new album, and they’re joined by a wide range of legends, including Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Lou Reed and Snoop Dogg (who I think has now officially appeared on albums by every single living musician in history). I dug the first single, “Stylo”, and this is another album that has made the rounds online but I’ve resisted listening to thus far.
Just two of a slew of interesting albums coming out today. We can add the latest round of Hendrix reissues to this list, as well as a new album from perennial underachiever Ludacris. The man is one of the greatest emcees to ever come out of the South, one would think that after ten years, the guy would have more to talk about than hoes.
Oh, “Precious” (starring Academy Award winner Mo’Nique…wow, that looks weird to read) is out on DVD today as well.
Anyway, today’s a beautiful spring day, it’s a great one to spend listening to awesome music!!
As always, a shout out to Pause and Play, the best new release information site in the free world.