Album Flashback: BlakRoc – The Greatest Rap-Rock Collab Of All Time
The genres of rock and rap have a long and storied history, with Live Aboutpointing out its hip-hop roots. While many musicians have collaborated and blurred the lines of the genre, we'd have to go back to 1986 to witness the act that pushed it into the mainstream: rap group Run D.M.C.'s collaboration with rock band Aerosmith for the remake of Walk This Way. Prior to this collaboration, the Beastie Boys were already starting to muddle up the definitions of rap and rock music as they were transitioning from their punk roots to becoming a full-fledged rap trio. These events are what set the groundwork for the multitude of collaborations between rap and rock artists for years to come.
However, not all collaborations then and now were created equal. For every Jay-Z and Linkin Park collaboration, there was bound to be at least one Limp Bizkit among the bunch. But if we're talking about the greatest rap-rock collab of all time, it would be foolish to ignore 2009's BlakRoc.
BlakRoc is an album born from the collaboration of American rock band The Black Keys and Damon Dash, co-founder and former co-owner of Roc-A-Fella Records. This unlikely pairing was brought about by Dash's admiration for the Ohio-based rock group, which led to him reaching out and inviting them over to his studio. Soon after, more and more artists were being called in to collaborate, the culmination of which was the 11-track album that we know today.
The album features guest appearances from several hip hop and R&B acts, namely Mos Def, Nicole Wray, Pharoahe Monch, Ludacris, Billy Danze of M.O.P., Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, Jim Jonesand NOE of ByrdGang, as well as Raekwon, RZA, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard (O.D.B.) of the Wu-Tang Clan. The O.D.B. feature was made possible due to the tapes being signed over to Dash's brief venture Roc4Life, a subsidiary of Def Jam Records. Given these names, the rap pedigree demonstrated by the album's features alone is staggering. But how then were they able to create as seamless an end product as BlakRoc? The answer: Dan Auerbach. Auerbach of The Black Keys was an instrumental figure in pushing the harmonic collaboration — so much so that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that he was the glue that was holding it all together.
A living legend of modern blues guitar, Auerbach understandably incorporates a lot of pedals and equipment into his sound. To achieve the controlled growls of his guitar in this album, it involved the EarthQuaker Devices Terminal V2 Destructive Fuzz Device a diverse and customized recreation of the Shin-Ei FY-2 Companion Fuzz. This is yet another testament to how controlled and deliberate the album is. Now, while control may imply that the artists have had to subdue their sound, thereby dampening the music for the sake of collaboration, that simply isn't the case. Control here refers to restraint. It's about knowing how much is too much, and this is where the album truly shines. Even the track <em>Coochie</em>, which is probably the most sonically esoteric of the bunch, shows the amount of restraint that you wouldn't expect from a collaboration of juggernauts of the music industry.
At the end of the day, BlakRoc works because the collaborators chose to play off each other — even when expectations dictate otherwise. Collaborations, at times, can find themselves ending up as musical pissing contests, with musicians taking turns trying to outdo each other. This is why rap and rock artists can take away a lot from this album. And while some may find this approach boring or middling, it's hard to believe that it could have been done any other way without diminishing the entire experience.
