The hip-hop mogul Damon Dash is a man of innovation. The Rocawear clothing label he set up with Jay-Z made the news when its faux-fur jackets were found to contain hair from the endangered Chinese racoon dog. He stars in a reality TV show called Ultimate Hustler, in which he plays a kind of hip-hop Alan Sugar to a team of hopeful entrepreneurs. And he’s the man behind Blakroc, a new project bringing together the East Coast blues rockers the Black Keys and some of the most famous names in rap.
Hip-hop and rock have always rubbed along well together, usually in one-off collaborations such as the soundtrack to the 1993 film Judgment Night or Run DMC’s Walk This Way, but rarely has a rock band signed up for a whole album. Blakroc’s rappers include Mos Def, RZA, Ludacris, Q-Tip and Raekwon. Though the Black Keys (Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney) co-produced the record, the overwhelming rap presence is apparent from the first beat of the explosive Coochie, which features Ol’ Dirty Bastard from beyond the grave. “I gotta have it like a rabbit almost all of the time” he announces via unfinished demos, and doesn’t sound dead at all.
In contrast, Auerbach’s singing on the RZA collaboration Dollaz and Sense sounds strangely flat and inflexible, like a sample of himself. Though Carney’s loose, loping drums help to underscore the innate connection between rap and blues, it’s the rappers who make it sound natural: Dipset’s Jim Jones lags deliciously behind the beat on What You Do to Me, while Mos Def’s heavy-lidded monologue in On the Vista is just one step away from “the talking blues”. Throw in some live guitar, record the whole thing in 11 days and there are moments when it almost sounds like hip-hop is willing to get its hands dirty again. But this is a Damon Dash project. He has brought out a new car to accompany the record, a tricked-out ride called the Blakroc Chevy Camaro.
(V2/Co-op; out on Mon)