Danger Mouse and Black Thought’s No Gold Teeth: All my Hip Hop Christmases at Once

Some people may know Danger Mouse from his Grey Album mash up bootleg where he blended The Beatles’ White Album and Jay Z’s Black Album. He has been involved with countless projects from movies to high profile collabs such as: Danger Doom with MF DOOM and Broken Bells with James Mercer from The Shins. He now finds himself with east coast hip hop icon Black Thought in a collab I can only envision in my dreams.

No Gold Teeth is the lead single on a massive project with Danger Mouse and Black Thought called Cheat Codes, which is due in August. This is going to be a huge project with guest spots by Run the Jewels, Joey Bada$$, A$AP Rocky and others…it’s going to be huge. This is also Mouse’s first hip hop collab since 2005 and it has his fingerprints all over it. He uses his classic 50s / 60s blues soul samples and bass lines throughout the track. More specifically, he uses Hugh Masekela’s version of the late 60s track Stop. Much like his previous hip hop production work, his samples and bass work flawlessly with Black Thought’s fire delivery.

This brings me to Black Thought, who I love. I am a huge fan of how Black Thought, and other members of The Roots, take one rhyme scheme and stretch it within an inch of its life. He can a rhyme about “bag weight” and keep it going and going and going until you think he has run through all the words in the English language. He is similar to the late MF DOOM in this respect, in how both he and DOOM can take a rhyme and look at it from every angle. I love Thought’s bars and unconventional rhyming schemes and this track is a great example of his immense talent.

No Gold Teeth is just a teaser for a potentially mind blowing main course. In that sense, you can feel like they are holding a little bit back…like giving it all to you now is too much for you to handle. For such a combustable duo you have to ease into it, because getting its full force would be like staring into the sun. This track has me super excited for the record and I may need to order a welding mask with express post in order to be properly protected from the pure hip hop napalm I am about to experience in August.

Listen to No Gold Teeth