Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton made his name making hip hop, creating an extraordinary calling card for his production skills back in 2004 when he angered EMI Records by daring to sample The Beatles. He manufactured an intricate tapestry out of the music from The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s rapping on his Black Album, calling it The Grey Album. You still won’t find it on Spotify for copyright reasons but it launched a stellar career producing Adele, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Gorillaz, writing a UK number one as half of Gnarls Barkley and winning the 2011 Grammy for Producer of the Year.
So it’s surprising that, aside from forming Dangerdoom with the late rapper MF Doom for one album in 2005, and executive producing ASAP Rocky’s album At.Long.Last.ASAP in 2015, Burton has largely stayed away from rappers since. Understandably, anticipation is high for a union with Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, frontman of hip hop band The Roots, which Trotter first revealed in 2020 and said had been in the pipeline for “13 or 14 years”.
