The Beatles Just Don’t Sound the Same without a Hip-Hop Beat and Lyrics
National Public Radio aired a WHYY piece recently about The Grey Album, which is, according to DJ Danger Mouse’s Web site, “… an art project/experiment that uses the full vocal content of Jay-Z’s Black Album recorded over new beats and production made using the Beatles White Album as the sole source material.” The label owning the rights to The Beatles’ music, EMI, is taking legal action against DJ Dangermouse on the grounds that his work infringes on The Beatles’ copyright.
The album wasn’t made for commercial distribution, but on Tuesday, February 24, a number of sites hosted the album for downloading to protest EMI’s cease-and-desist letters in an effort called Grey Tuesday. At the heart of the issue is that DJ Danger Mouse did not seek permission through the proper channels to sample The Beatles’ work. Some artists without much money do not seek permission when they sample others’ work, especially for testing new pieces, which is what DJ Danger Mouse may be doing with this album. A lawyer interviewed for the NPR segment indicated that DJ Danger Mouse’s use of The Beatles’ music may fall under the copyright law’s fair use clause as a transformative work.
At the time of the NPR piece, neither Jay-Z nor a representative of the remaining Beatles was taking action against the artist.
This kind of situation has a legal precedent: 2 Live Crew won the ability to sample Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” in a case that went to the US Supreme Court.
I had the opportunity to listen to The Grey Album this weekend. It is an interesting mix of both albums, often with the music from The White Album supporting The Black Album. Instead of playing songs from beginning to end on top of each other for each piece, sometimes DJ Danger Mouse repeats a few bars of The Beatles with Jay-Z’s work and has often stripped the lyrics out of The Beatles’ songs. Some songs and portions of them are easy to recognize; some aren’t.
Addendum 12/15: I saw a video based on The Grey Album and historic footage of a Beatles concert today. It’s great. I’m going to try to find it online, but it seems like the site that was hosting it was pulled.
Addendum 9/12/05: Banned Music has more on the album, including a download of it that requires BitTorrent.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
[...] I (finally) bought a copy of Jay-Z’s The Black Album because I heard bits of it on DJ Dangermouse’s The Gray Album. (I’ve owned The Beatles’ The White Album–even as a record–for years, so I don’t need to purchase it.) I doubt I would have otherwise bought, heard, or even been remotely interested in The Black Album. HipHop, rap, whatever you call the genres into which The Black Album fits, is just not music I seek out on my own. There’s nothing wrong with it. It just doesn’t usually suit me. [...]