This may seem like it’s coming out of nowhere, but fuck The Grey Album.

Dangermouse did this cute little thing back in 2004 where he took the a cappella version of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and put them over different songs from The Beatles’ The White Album. It had a fun little concept and the cover had some nice caricatures. Adorable, right?

No. This shit got hyped up from so many people. Even a few people with musical tastes that I respect got sucked up in it. It is admittedly a fun concept, but on a musical level this is pretty sub-par. I mean, it’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever heard from Dangermouse, yet somehow The Grey Album is still held up as some beautiful example of a cultural mash-up. What is even more disappointing is how many incredible mash-ups and remixes were made using those vocal tracks that don’t get a tenth of the recognition.

Enter DJ Kno.

The incredibly skilled producer of Cunninlynguists worked on a remix album himself. It didn’t have a cute little theme to it, and the cover was just a photo of Kno doing the “pulling the hat down” pose, and the name of the mixtape is kind of clunky, but The White Albulum (not a typo) is superior to The Grey Album in almost every way possible. Kno crafted some great beats that actually work with the vocals. The Beatles tracks on The Grey Album were barely remixed into something resembling hip-hop, and the result was two incredibly disparate aspects of a song.

Kno does a great job of injecting his own personal style into the records without losing what makes Jay great. With his slow, intricate, and emotional production style, these songs read more like songs such as (the original version of) “My 1st Song” or “Regrets”, then what Jay has spent most of the last ten years doing.

Anyways, DJ Kno is great. The White Albulum is great. Also, his production work on Cunninlynguists A Piece of Strange is fucking jaw dropping. Get that.