Rapper Black Thought and producer Danger Mouse's collaborative album, Cheat Codes, has arrived.
The pair connected musically back in the mid-aughts on Danger Mouse and MF DOOM’s Adult Swim collaboration The Mouse and The Mask in 2005 and initially had plans to release a collaborative album called Dangerous Thoughts. A decade later, they've finally linked to drop a full-length project. In between that time, Black Thought has been busy fronting The Roots on Jimmy Fallon's late night show, and flexing his solo rap muscles with his Streams of Thought EP series that started in 2018. Danger Mouse, who shot to popularity back in 2004 with the Grey Album, his mash-up of Jay-Z's Black Album, and continued working with Cee-Lo Green (Gnarls Barkley), MF Doom, and James Mercer of the Shins on a collaborative project Broken Bells, has reconnected with his Hip-Hop leanings for this project.
A string of singles preceded the album's release, including "Aquamarine" featuring UK singer Michael Kiwanuka, "Strangers" featuring A$AP Rocky and Run The Jewels, "No Gold Teeth" and "Because" featuring Joey Bada$$, Russ and Dylan Cartlidge.
In a recent interview, Black Thought told AV Club that once he and Danger Mouse figured out the direction of the 12-track project, things came easily.
"It came with ease," he said. "Like once we figured it out, the approach was to arrive at an idea and then build on it, so if there was a sketch that Brian would come up with for a beat, it was to something I would write. Every song that I wrote was written specifically to the music that you hear, like to the accompaniment. But none of it was complete when I wrote to it. So there’d be an idea, I’d write an idea and record some stuff. And then after we agreed upon where whatever it is that I’m doing is going to live, then he’ll finish sort of building around that, bass lines and different choral elements and different little subtle sample nuances that he’s able to add sort of after the fact. So it is a bit of an assembly line. But we worked together. We recorded this all together, every step of the way."
Cheat Codes is available to stream now.
