Danger Mouse & Black Thought Share "No Gold Teeth" from Long-rumored Collaborative Effort Cheat Codes Formerly Dangerous Thoughts (BMG)
Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) & Black Thought (Tariq Trotter) have been long-time friends and infrequent collaborators. Long before The Roots/The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon emcee ever issued a proper solo effort (now, we're up to Streams of Thought, Vol. 3,) there had been rumblings of a collaborative effort with Danger Mouse cleverly titled Dangerous Thoughts. By most accounts now found online, that was around 2005-06 with The Roots steadily releasing Game Theory, Rising Down, How I Got Over, undun, and ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin in the years since. They became the house band for Fallon's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in 2009 and transitioned along with him to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2014.
Danger Mouse has been far from inactive himself since 2005-06, releasing The Mouse & The Mask & Occult Hymn EP as DANGERMDOOM with MF DOOM, St. Elsewhere & The Odd Couple as Gnarls Barkley with Cee-Lo, The Last Laugh with Joker's Daughter, Dark Night of The Soul with Sparklehorse, Broken Bells, Meyrin Fields & After The Disco EP as Broken Bells with James Mercer (The Shins,) Rome with Italian composer Daniele Luppi, and Lux Prima with Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs.) Updates regarding Dangerous Thoughts had been largely slim to none over the course of the past 17 years; although, Black Thought did appear on a Bonus! Track entitled "Mad Nice" with Vincent "Vinny" Price found on a 2017 Deluxe Edition re-release of The Mouse & The Mask on DOOM's own Metal Face Records.
Earlier today, Danger Mouse & Black Thought (DMxBT for short) finally announced the sheer existence of of their mythical full-length collaborative album, now called Cheat Codes. According to a press release, "each mistakenly thought the other had moved on and their collaboration had died on the vine, but, truthfully, neither ever stopped wanting to work togethe." However, in recent years, Danger Mouse had indicated he wanted to return to making Hip-Hop and reached back out to Black Thought with some new ideas and Cheat Codes magically began to take shape. "This time around, Burton was a far more seasoned song-writer and producer, Trotter a more extraordinary rapper," the DMxBT press release continues.
"So, setting aside all distractions, Burton played Trotter some new music and the ideas and words flowed. It was liberating." Along with the announcement of Cheat Codes, Danger Mouse & Black Thought shared a single called "No Gold Teeth," as well as an accompanying music video directed by UNCANNY AKA George Muncey & Elliot Elder. It's one Hell of a hard-sounding, tactful offering from two of Hip-Hop finest and. maybe, most unlikely collaborators. Cheat Codes will additionally feature the vocal talents of Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Kid Sister, Joey Bada$$, Russ, Dylan Cartlidge, Michael Kiwanuka, A$AP Rocky, Run The Jewels, and Conway The Machine, as well as a posthumous appearance from MF DOOM. Rest assured, this is likely gonna be a contender for Album of The Year! Cheat Codes is now available for pre-order in a number of different formats from BMG. Danger Mouse & Black Thought's Cheat Codes is out 8/12 on BMG... so, get ready!