Dangermouse & James Mercer are Broken Bells

Wow, has this been a musical week at CMG or what? Last night I caught this song and dug it, A LOT. Broken Bells is the new project of uber-producer Dangermouse (Gnarles Barkley, The Grey Album, etc), and James Mercer of the Shins, who frankly I don’t know much about. I was drawn to this song because I sort of felt like this is where music was going to go, but hasn’t quite gone. See, I’m a product of what I like to call the hip hop generation. Now that hip hop music aka rap has gone from creative, feel good, deliciousness to bubblegum, pop garbage for the most part, I was hoping all “hip hoppers” with any shred of talent would make hip-hop versions of other music. I don’t mean rock songs would be sung by Young Jeezy, I mean artists who can think beyond just “rap,” will help to make the music that will help self professed B-Boys like myself, enjoy other genres. Then when someone in the know says “hey that sounds just like ____,” we can go back and appreciate what we’ve missed, due to our hip hop snobbery. Groups like N.E.R.D, Gnarles Barkley and even Mos Def have been going down this road for years. Cats like Lupe Fiasco are starting to flirt with other genres, and Kid Cudi is all over what I’m describing, though his weirdness is severely outweighing his talent. Simply put, there are a slew of us who listened to mostly rap our whole lives, grew up, and what we loved about rap has all but died. Now we don’t know where to go, and we’d be kidding ourselves if we just decided to start listening to other forms of music. It has to be done right, and we need to be saved by the very genre of music that we stood up for all those years, that people had a hard time accepting. Now that rap is pop, hip hop needs to branch out, simply because hip hop owes us big. Bravo to Dangermouse for putting his beat machine under his arm, and seeking out projects with rock musicians. Maybe his talent and my prayers will help make music good again. Enjoy “The High Road!” Hopefully more artists will be taking it.