If you were compiling a list of the most unlikely statements ever uttered by a hip-hop producer, you could start with this one from Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton: "When I realized I was so similar to Woody Allen-this old Jewish man-it bugged me out!" Burton, 26, is standing on a path overgrown with brush outside his East L.A. house, reciting the qualities he most admires about the Annie Hall auteur. "The line between seriousness and comedy, the people he works with, being prolific. People may not like everything he does, but they check for it every time."
Messing with boundaries and pumping out a steady flow of projects fits Burton fine, just like the furry gray mouse suit he dons for public appearances. Raving about indie-rock bands like Grandaddy and Sparklehorse, claiming that both the film Amadeus and the Britney Spears song "Toxic" have blown his mind, Burton is eclectic, to say the least. Last year, for instance, he painstakingly pieced together Jay-Z's The Black Album with the Beatles' self-titled 1968 classic known as the "White Album," creating the attention-grabbing downloaders' dream, The Grey Album. The concept was brilliantly controversial, and pure Burton-a walking copyright violation (even his stage name is unauthorized!) whose mild-mannered, music-geek persona has its own B-side: a compulsion to flout convention at every turn.
Climbing into the backseat of his publicist's SUV, Burton buckles up and says, joking, "Let me strap myself in here so I don't swing on you if you ask me some crazy shit." We're off to a pet store because Burton has grown attached to the two mice (christened Betty and Veronica) that Spin provided for his photo shoot. Now, he can't rest until he provides his tiny brethren with a proper home.
Even in transit, Burton is scrawling appointments in his ever-present day planner while answering the Led Zeppelin "Black Dog" ring tone on his cell phone. Until this year, he was an obscure producer who had practically abandoned his kitchen to platoons of ants. But with The Grey Album's notoriety, he's taking meetings with major labels and secretively sifting through a list of potential recording offers ("I don't want to name-drop," he says). Burton wasn't the only DJ/producer to accept Jay-Z's open challenge to "remix the hell out of" his final record: DJ Lt. Dan, 9th Wonder, Bazooka Joe, Kno of the CunninLynguists, and jazz producer Kev Brown all worked up versions. But The Grey Album was easily the most ambitious, earning the praise of Roc-A-Fella CEO Damon Dash, producer/rapper Kanye West, and the Neptunes' Chad Hugo. Not all of the attention was positive-Burton's use of the hallowed Beatles (always reluctant to license samples) caught the attention of people who rarely listen to hip-hop. And some of those new listeners had the power to make Burton pay for his legal indiscretions.
Just this afternoon, in fact, he learned that he's the target of a possible lawsuit by EMI-which owns the copyright to the Beatles sound recordings (Michael Jackson and Sony/ATV own most of the publishing rights). But, in a way, Burton has been preparing for this dilemma for years: The liner notes of his first mix CD in the late '90s included a note saying that he acknowledged the consequences of appropriating music without permission. "I knew The Grey Album was illegal when I was doing it," he says, "but I didn't want that to stop me from trying it as an art project. I just never thought it would get to this point."
Burton was cleaning his bedroom, listening to the "White Album," holding a Jay-Z CD in his hand, when The Grey Album's eureka moment happened. Immediately, he began a two-and-a-half-week odyssey of ten-hour workdays (with a photo of Woody Allen on the wall and a snapshot of actress Monica Bellucci on his computer desktop for inspiration). He disassembled every speck of sound on the "White Album," then constructed new tracks that complemented Jay-Z's vocals (see below). He pressed 3,000 personal copies, marked for promotional use only, then watched as the CD became a prized collector's item and the press took notice. Two and a half weeks later, a letter from EMI arrived. "So this is what a cease-and-desist looks like" was Burton's first thought. EMI spokeswoman Jeanne Meyer says her company supports sampling when artists go through the proper channels, but "[Burton] never approached us. He never asked permission, not once."
By this point, thousands of discs had been sold online, bootlegged, or just given away. A music-activist organization called Downhill Battle latched onto the Danger Mouse cause, naming February 24 "Grey Tuesday," a day of Internet protest. More than 400 sites participated, many offering free copies of The Grey Album to oppose "the way major labels have turned copyright law into a weapon against musicians and fans," says Downhill cofounder Nicholas Reville. In a 24-hour blitz, users downloaded more than a million individual Grey Album songs.
The Mouse didn't always live so dangerously. He spent his first 13 years in the Rockland County suburbs north of New York City, grooving to pop and hair metal alongside his mostly white peers. "I'm a pretty light-skinned guy, and that's always affected the way I'm perceived," Burton says. "My parents never told me what a person of this race is supposed to do. I just did whatever." He learned some saxophone to play the theme to Pee-wee's Playhouse and drew comics. His musical tastes evolved under his older sister's tutelage, and when his family moved to Atlanta, he became infatuated with hip-hop. "N.W.A and Public Enemy-I loved anything with a lot of profanity in it," he says, chuckling.
For college, he relocated to nearby Athens, Georgia (the town that's home to R.E.M., the Elephant 6 rock collective, and about 800,000 fledgling indie-rock bands), taking a job as the hip-hop buyer at a local record shop, Wuxtry. A coworker, John Fernandes of Elephant 6 band the Olivia Tremor Control, passed along psychedelic rock tips, and Burton sponged up other Elephant 6 influences, including a fascination with analog equipment and brainy musical puzzles. "He's not a slacker," says Fernandes. "Even after he moved, he'd email the store with his picks of what we should order."
In Athens, Burton completed his first original project, The Chilling Effect, a moody, trip-hoppy soundtrack to an as-yet-unrealized film he'd envisioned. To raise money to press and package the disc, he started DJ'ing, specializing in live turntable mash-ups of seemingly unrelated records. "I have some friends who are into hip-hop and don't listen to anything else, and friends who just listen to rock and don't have a clue about hip-hop," says Burton. "So I figured I could change some of their minds about each other." He also concocted a series of mix CDs under the Danger Mouse moniker, first tinkering with the Beatles by pairing the bass line from "Come Together" with Wu-Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M." and overhauling "A Day in the Life." Eerily, he even released a CD mix that came to be known as the "White Album" because of its mock-Beatles, all-white artwork (the cover read merely: Danger Mouse).
Burton eventually decided that he needed a change of scenery, so he sold his most beloved possessions-more than 50 Jimi Hendrix records-and decamped to London, crashing in a youth hostel. He landed a pub job and picked up some soundtrack work for the Cartoon Network, generating enough cash to record and release a 12-inch of mash-ups. But he longed to produce a proper hip-hop record; eventually, he chased down Jemini, a quick-tongued Harlem MC who was known as "Jemini the Gifted One" when he recorded for PolyGram in the mid-'90s. Last year, the duo cooked up Ghetto Pop Life, a swinging collection of quirky samples and gritty rhymes that featured such MCs as Tha Liks and Prince Poetry of Organized Konfusion. They're now at work on their second full-length, Kill Your Heroes.
A booming-voiced Brooklyn native, Jemini has been around the industry block enough times to know every crack in the sidewalk. "I call Brian the Andy Kaufman of hip-hop," Jemini says. "He's your classic eccentric, neurotic producer. Before we go on, you can catch him twisting his hair in knots. I have to slap his hand, like, 'Cut that shit out!'"
While unpacking pet supplies on his orange living-room carpet, and waiting for calls from his lawyer, Burton still gets giddy talking about the Fab Four. "They had pop music in the palm of their hands, and what they chose to do with it was so admirable," he says. "I think hip-hop is the new pop, and people need to step up and try some things like that."
With the mice settled into their new glass habitat, we move to Burton's upstairs bedroom, the birthplace of The Grey Album. He motions toward his turntable, then pauses. "For weeks, I haven't listened to the 'White Album,'" he says. "It was like being friends with somebody for a long time, then sleeping with them. It's like, you're still cool, but it's different."
It's tempting to presume that The Grey Album was Burton's gimmicky effort to attract the kind of hype that leads to big recording contracts and a fleet of Hummers. But if there's a payday in his future, he seems more likely to spend it on upgrading his studio or buying back those beloved Hendrix records.
"I do things and don't really think about what's going to happen afterwards," he says. "If they feel right, I'll do 'em-same with the mouse suit, same with the record." Then he catches himself, afraid of seeming too pretentious. "Not to get all deep about it."
Grey Matter Danger Mouse explains how Jay-Z met the Beatles on his illicit masterpiece
"What More Can I Say?" "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" "This is one of my favorites because I liked the original [Beatles track] so much-all the pianos. The drums are real heavy kicks, but I had to reverb them. I didn't want it to sound like I threw drums on the Beatles, I wanted it to sound like [the Beatles] were playing them underneath."
"Encore" "Glass Onion" and "Savoy Truffle" "I remember hearing that 'Savoy Truffle' break years ago, and I was like, 'Oh, shit! That's the Beatles? That shit is ill!'"
"December 4th" "Mother Nature's Son" and "Glass Onion" "I saved [the 'Mother Nature's Son' sample] for Jay-Z's mom's song. It's so obvious-a Beatles fan will get it if they put two and two together. I like to do a little extra for people who pay attention."
"99 Problems" "Helter Skelter""Ninety-nine problems is what it gave me. I kept trying to make the drums dictate the rhythm, and it wasn't working. The bass line is what makes it roll. I love 'Helter Skelter.' I can't drive and listen to this song-I'll wreck or kill somebody."
"Dirt off Your Shoulder" "Julia""The first bars [of 'Julia'] are all I used to make this beat (except for the drums, of course). I was kind of showing off in a way-like, 'This is all I'm gonna use!' I wanted it to have a Timbaland type of beat, so there are all the little hi-hats. This is one of the most complex ones, with all the snares and kicks and all that stuttering and crazy shit."
"Moment of Clarity" "Happiness Is a Warm Gun""I used a lot of Ringo Starr-one of the reasons I love the Beatles is his drumming style, just the subtleties of what he was doing. I made the main beat even freakier, but Ringo was pretty dope on his own."
"Change Clothes" "Piggies" and "Dear Prudence""I pulled the 'Piggies' loop out and thought people were going to hate it! Getting my 'Prudence' bass line to work was the hardest thing, just pitching it right. I know a couple of people have tried to figure all this stuff out, but you'll never figure out the drums. I can't figure out the fucking drums."
"Allure" "Dear Prudence""In [the Beatles'] recording, you can barely hear that bass line. This is kind of Wu-Tang-y to me, the way it was just hard, dirty. If you listen, [John Lennon's] vocals are really peaked-out and fucked-up. I was like, 'Shit, I didn't dirty up his vocals, they were already that way!'"
"Justify My Thug" "Rocky Raccoon""This whole thing came because of this little hiccup thing right here [plays main loop of 'Rocky Raccoon,' which has a pause in it]. It was an imperfection that I left in there, and it made me do the beat the way I did. I thought it was kind of ill, unexpected. I pitched it down three notes to make it more bass-heavy."
"Lucifer" "Revolution 9" "This was my experimental, whatever-the-fuck song-I used 37 different tracks. I took the stuff the Beatles had backwards and made it forwards. It's simple, but nobody even thought to do it. [He plays the track: 'Six, six, six, murder, murder, Jesus, six, six, six.'] On The Grey Album, that's Jay-Z the whole time. I made his voice really low. He says 'murder,' he says 'Jesus,' and he says 'six' in one of his songs."
"My 1st Song" "Cry Baby Cry" and "Savoy Truffle""Crazy, crazy song. I love that loop [plays the vocal hook from the end of 'Cry Baby Cry']. This was going to be an instrumental track, but I thought Lennon's vocals worked over it. But it was kind of odd. Some people like it, some people don't." C.G.
