The Visor

Black Keys twist hip-hop into album with help from Ludacris, Mos Def and more

January 21, 2010

Victoria Grieshammer

Let’s be honest, Akron is known for its rubber and not much else. But one rock band of true Akronites is changing all that.

The Black Keys is a blues-rock band which consists of Firestone High School alums singer and songwriter Dan Auerbach and Pat Carny, drummer and producer. The band, which was officially formed in 2001, has a discography of seven studio albums, one of which made the Rolling Stone Magazine top 100 albums of the decade and one collaboration album. It is this new collaboration album which, at first mention, may induce fear into a true Black Keys fan that is truly set to make waves.

Blakroc is a collaboration of Akron’s own up-and-coming Black Keys and some of hip-hop’s most established and epic names including Mos Def, Ludacris, Jim Jones, Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest and some members of the Wu-Tang Clan. This experimental album was released on November 27, 2009, the infamous Black Friday, and although it has not yet hit record popularity with the masses, it has caught the attention of music experts. Recorded at Studio G and co-produced by Carney and Auerbach themselves, Blakroc has hit number 21 on the U.S. Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, number seven on U.S. Billboard Top Rap Albums and a striking number one on U.S. Billboard Top Heatseekers. On top of all that, the album’s first single ‘Hoochie Coo (Ain’t Nothin Like You)’ was recently performed on the David Letterman Show.

The album itself proves to be unfailingly catchy, innovative and simply hypnotizing. It spans a number of genres and strangely manages to conquer each one with ease. The album refreshingly restrains from the stereotypical ‘look at me and my money’ aspect of modern day music to produce a somewhat modest, for lack of a better descriptor, prototype for the album’s lyrics. The Keys provide the instrumentals and some background singing while sticking to their blues-based rock, complete with heavy drums and an equally heavy, “big” guitar sound. The M.C.’s chose a somewhat retro-esque hip-hip and R&B approach to the album which compliments the sound of the Keys in a ground breaking way. And, thus, a love child of funk and soul was born.

A new Black Keys album should be expected in spring of 2010. Until then, Akronites should keep an eye on this rising band as it may just bring Akron back on the map.

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