JAY-Z - ''The Unofficial Black Album Remix'' (Paul Nice has produced the Beastie Boys, and has also put out his own collections of sampled beats for his fellow disc jockeys to reassemble. RJD2)'' (The underground hip-hop producer RJD2 didn't actually produce ''The Silver Album.'' But he approved these remixes, which appropriate the burly tracks RJD2 originally produced for Massive Attack, Aceyalone, Cannibal Ox and El-P, built from live-band samples of 1960's soul, 1970's funk, rock and even a snippet of chamber music. 4.'' But the pace accelerates through each track, slicing the Beatles ever more microscopically to envelop Jay-Z in a swirl of voices from the past (mostly Paul McCartney) and a rhythmic barrage.īAZOOKA JOE PRESENTS - ''The Silver Album (Jay-Z vs. Here's an assessment, roughly in descending order, of ''Black Album'' remixes:ĭANGER MOUSE PRESENTS - ''The Grey Album'' (file-sharing sites): Recognizable samples and clever juxtapositions start most songs: ''Mother Nature's Son'' behind the voice of Jay-Z's mother on ''Dec. But Danger Mouse was by no means the only one to mesh familiar licks with Jay-Z's rhymes. 24 nearly 200 Web sites posted the album, and more than a million songs from it were downloaded they're now ubiquitous on file-sharing sites. EMI Records, the Beatles' label, routinely refuses all requests to sample the Beatles' original recordings, and when Danger Mouse put into circulation ''The Grey Album,'' which combines the ''Black Album'' raps with samples from the Beatles' white album (officially titled ''The Beatles''), legal threats were issued. The free-for-all hasn't thrilled some copyright holders. By exchanging the backup tracks, Jay-Z can sound introspective or vainglorious, whimsical or ominous. The reimagined tracks testify to producers' ingenuity, as well as the ease of sample-and-loop technology, the omnivorousness of hip-hop and the adaptability of Jay-Z's valedictory boasts. Jay-Z has now been matched to everything from the Beatles to Bjork, Metallica to Curtis Mayfield, techno blips to string quartets. More than a dozen versions are just an Internet search away on sites like With no expectation that their remakes would be commercially released, many remixers ignored the thicket of copyright negotiations that govern the use of samples from old albums. While other rappers regularly include a cappella raps on their singles, Jay-Z challenged would-be producers to remake the entire album, and they have taken him up on it. JAY-Z didn't just announce his retirement from hip-hop with ''The Black Album.'' He also left a going-away present by making available the unaccompanied raps from all 14 of the album's songs.

Jay z albums playlist