The New Music

Who: Blackroc featuring Raekwon

Sounds like: Classic, twisted Wu-Tang funk with murky, progressive live instrumentation.

RIYL: Raekwon, Wu-Tang Clan, The Black Keys, Danger Mouse, Beck, Gnarls Barkley, DJ Shadow, Jay-Z (specifically “99 Problems”), Black Lips.

Need to know: The concept of rock and rap joining forces has an indelible stigma attached to it, and for good reason. Anyone who’s lived through the likes of limpbizkit, Korn, Project Wyze (remember them?) etc, knows how awful music can get when you combine metal riffs with rap vocals. It’s the “chocolate ice cream and turkey” principle - independently, they can be delicious, but combine them and the result is liable to be disgusting.

So when Ohio-based blues rock duo The Black Keys announced that they were working with Jay-Z’s former business partner Dame Dash to create Blakroc, a collaborative project featuring a strong lineup of rap guests including Mos Def, RZA, Pharoahe Monch and Q-Tip, it didn’t sound like the best idea.

Fortunately, recent attempts to merge the two genres in the world of independent music have yeilded far more tasteful results than the major label-fuelled rock-rap movement of the early ’00s. For examples, Kid Koala’s turntablism-meets-grunge project The Slew, whose touring band included former members of Wolfmother, and the Black Lips’ psych-rap song with GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, “The Drop I Hold.”

Perhaps inspired by the GZA’s experimentation, Raekwon joins The Black Keys on the first single from their Blackroc project, the aggressively-named “Stay Off The Fuckin Flowers”. And you know what? It’s not half-bad.

Track: On “Stay Off The F**kin Flowers” Raekwon’s chorus-less flow tells yet another hard-to-follow crime-kingpin tale rife with cryptic yet memerizing Shaolin slang. The dirty, slow blues-funk backing track works really well with the storytelling format - The Black Keys’ evolving arrangement accentuates the action and add to the narrative thrust.

Buy: Nothing yet, but Blakroc’s album is slated for a November 27th release.

- Jason Richards