Photo by John PeetsThe brainchild of The Black Keys, former Roc-A-Fella records partner Damon Dash and John Peets of Q Prime South, BlakRoc started as a studio experiment. The blues-influenced, garage-rock duo entered the studio, jammed and then brought in some of the biggest names in modern hip hop to rap over live instrumentation (no samples were used on the record). The results feature a number of today’s biggest MCs, including Mos Def, Q-Tip, RZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, Ludacris, Pharoahe Monch, Jim Jones, NOE, Nicole Wray and Billy Danze. Acclaimed music journalist Alan Light sits down with The Black Keys to talk about the project’s origins and recording, what other musical adventures the duo have planned and how two white rockers from Ohio came up with one of the year’s best rap records. Below is an excerpt from the article.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. “A rap-rock album? Are you kidding?” And it is undoubtedly true that in the vast spectrum of popular music, there may be no subgenre that has committed more vile atrocities on human ears. Oh, the early fusions attempted by Run-D.M.C. or The Clash were novel enough, but by the time the merger of hard rock and hip-hop had solidified into its own category around the turn of the century, the results were simply horrifying. Limp Bizkit? Korn? Linkin Park? The Kottonmouth Kings? Talk about the worst of both worlds.

Coming at it from the other direction, The Roots as the exception that proves the rule – when actual MCs experimented with live accompaniment. Despite the best of intentions, the results have generally turned out to be less offensive, but forgettably flaccid.

Fortunately, the BlakRoc principals are the first to agree with this assessment. “On the surface, it sounds horrendous, because it rarely is done right,” says Carney of the marriage of live instrumentation and rap. “Other than some stuff by Jay-Z, there haven’t been any live bands with hip-hop that really interested me. But I think Dan and I respect the art form enough to try not to put our fingerprints all over it. This wasn’t like Fall Out Boy hanging with Akon.”

Auerbach adds, “It’s always sort of a gimmick and not really organic. Or it’s just instruments trying to copy hip-hop music. This was just raw instrumentation, from the get-go, and then lyrics on top – it started from the ground up.”

And according to Dash, the difference ultimately comes down to the motivation for this project. “It was never about, ‘Let’s make a rap-rock album,’” he says. “It was like art – let’s put this paint next to this paint and see what it looks like.” In some ways, the album (including its title) is reminiscent of work by the Black Rock Coalition, a movement which arose in the ‘80s as a way to reclaim rock and roll’s African-American heritage, and peaked with the breakthrough of Living Colour.
The breakneck pace of the BlakRoc sessions helped guarantee that things wouldn’t get monotonous. The Keys played their scuzzy, droning instrumentals for each rapper until they settled on a track they liked, and then the MC would settle in to write. Dash warned all of them that they had to stand and deliver in the studio – there would be no chance to take a beat home and write later.

“Everybody had their different method,” says Auerbach. “Mos liked to improvise – he wrote a bunch of lyrics, but when he ran out of words on paper, he just started free flowing. Jim Jones sat on a chair for like an hour and a half, looking like he was about to pass out. I thought, ‘Oh, great, we’re wasting all this time,’ but all of a sudden, he’s like, ‘I’m ready,’ and he gets up and does his verse.”

One of the Wu-Tang Clan’s most respected lyricists fully lived up to The Black Keys’ expectations from their beloved Shao-Lin Warriors. “Being around Raekwon is what I imagine being around Dylan is like,” Auerbach says. “He came in and listened to the music, sat down, smoked a blunt and in like half an hour, wrote 20 bars of the most visual, intense story line. And then he did it flawlessly – hit all the stops musically. That was like being around greatness.”

For the Keys, Raekwon was also an example of the misrepresentation of rappers in the media. “He’s always portrayed as Staten Island gritty, carrying a razor blade in his mouth,” says Auerbach. “Then he walks in and he’s, like, jovial. You never know what to expect – most of the things you read are untrue. Except about Lou Reed – he really is an asshole!”
The diverse lyrical tactics on BlakRoc are reflected in the range of the song structures. While Raekwon’s “Stay off the Fuckin’ Flowers” is a breathless, two-minute street narrative, a track like the first single, “Ain’t Nothing Like You,” is more elaborate, featuring Mos Def singing, Jim Jones rhyming, and Auerbach’s signature, laconic “la-la-la” backing vocals. R&B vocalist Nicole Wray adds melodic counterpoint to four of the tracks.

Though some of the tracks feel a bit too raw and unfinished, when it all really comes together – like Jones and Billy Danze trading verses and Wray and Auerbach batting around hooks on “What You Do to Me” – it sounds like a supercharged Black Keys song. The format even seems to have brought out some added vulnerability and self-reflection for the rappers, and the whole thing is relatively free of the “Look, Ma, I’m rhyming with a band!” lines that usually clutter such efforts.

A film crew documented the BlakRoc sessions and added webisodes to blackroc.com each week – what jumps out from the footage is how happy and relaxed the MCs were, seemingly freed by stepping out of their usual element. “While collaborating with The Black Keys and Damon Dash in the studio may seem like an unusual fit, it felt natural,” says Q-Tip in a statement on the site. “We were able to bring our own unique strengths and experiences together.”

There was one artist that the Keys wanted most of all. “After Mos and Jim came in, Dan was like, ‘Do you think you could get RZA?,’” says Dash. “I said I could try – we have the same barber in LA, so I called him and he reached out for me.”

“RZA is just a musical genius,” says Auerbach. “He’s our hero musically – there’s The Beatles, Carter and Ralph Stanley, and the RZA. There are some super dudes that have influenced me, and he’s right there.”

When the Wu-Tang mastermind came into the studio, he took a different approach to the BlakRoc concept. “He said, ‘I want to make a beat with you guys,’” Auerbach says, still visibly gleeful. “He hung out for a while with everybody and listened to music and then he just made an announcement – ‘We’re gonna start recording here, don’t anybody talk to me’ – and boom, he’s in it.” The web video shows him strumming a rapid-fire guitar line and shaping it into a beat before spitting a venomous verse that he reads off of his BlackBerry.

“I won’t lie,” says Dash. “When RZA started playing guitar, that fucked me up. I didn’t know he could play guitar, and I didn’t know he would take it so seriously.”

The project “helped me to remember before there was this monster called the music business,” remarks the RZA on the site. “We all had one common denominator – the love of music.”

The most surprising BlakRoc track of them all, however, came from somewhere beyond the grave. Dash signed the incomparable Wu-Tang trickster Ol’ Dirty Bastard to a contract prior to ODB’s death in 2004. A final album’s worth of material still hasn’t seen light of day, so Carney and Auerbach listened through the tapes to see if there was anything that might match the tracks that they still hadn’t filled. They found a raucous duet by ODB and Ludacris. “We figured we’d try to go with this really weird, half-time beat we had,” says Carney. “So they loaded the vocals onto ProTools, synched it with the first beat…”

“And it fit, exactly, over this instrumental,” continues Auerbach. “It was like we had the vocal before we did the instrumental. The verses change right when the music changed. We all looked at each other like, ‘What just happened?’ This whole project was kinda like that. It just happened so fast. It was just nuts, and before we knew it, it was over.”

Unfortunately, however, the fate of the delightfully raunchy “Coochie” is in the hands of Ludacris, who apparently has reservations about putting the song out. Dash can’t contain his anger about the situation. “I’m aggravated that I have to fight for this with somebody who doesn’t understand the spirit of the project,” he says, before promising that “the song will be heard, it just might not be sold.”

Over the course of the summer, The Black Keys made four trips to New York, working thirteen- or fourteen-hour days in Studio G. Since they were paying for everything themselves, says Carney, “we were trying to get as much done as fast as possible.” In eleven days, they completed eleven tracks.

“It felt like something special happened,” says Auerbach, “something that hadn’t been done before.”

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