Strangers
A listener’s companion to Black Thought and Danger Mouse’s Cheat Codes
1.
I smiled courteously at Black Thought and he reciprocated the gesture.
“We’ll let you know soon,” he said, shutting his front door.
He was a good dude, and a pro’s pro, too. Exactly the kind of industrious artist I was known for signing at Interscope Records, back when record labels existed. It’s hard to believe that was only seven years ago.
Memories from those days, the heyday, swam past my mind’s eye as I walked toward the train — the label parties, the signing bonuses, the gifts of rare music memorabilia that would show up unannounced on my desk, the occasional weekend off with my family, our favorite ultra-luxe cliffside Air BnB in the Arizona desert where I’d sit on the porch before the kids were up and listen to records in my headphones, gazing out at every shade of blood orange the desert could adorn, set off under a purple sky from the not yet risen sun. The way my kids would look at me like a hero.
Glass shattered underneath my sneakers. A hypodermic needle. The odor of the city made my nose involuntarily crinkle. Paper mill off-gassing. The only functioning paper mill in the country was in Philadelphia, completely unregulated, of course. Black market. The city smelled like one big asshole bleaching parlor.
Now I was only a block from the train, one of the few public utilities the government has been able to keep running since The Disintegration. It wouldn’t smell any better down there.
Black Thought unwound into the leather lounge chair in his basement studio, letting out a prolonged exhale while the turning gears in his mind slowed to a stop and arrived in the present moment. He sipped his lemon saltwater, percolating it in is mouth by pulling air in through his front teeth.
The freshest they could make the seawater running through the taps still had trace amounts of salt, even after three rounds through the filter. That is, unless they used the home desalinator. But that was too energy intensive to run often. So they mixed cubes of crystalized lemon flavoring and sugar with mildly salty water. In the early days after The Disintegration, Black Thought, or his mom, who lived with him now along with a handful of other relatives, would make these cubes themselves, mixing sugar and lemon flavoring packets in hot water, then reducing it down. Now, they bought their cubes pre-made on the black market, along with most other staples.
Danger Mouse, hunched over a mixing board on the other side of the room, twisted a knob and cocked his head the way a doctor might lean in while using a stethoscope. He was tweaking a 1971 Philwit & Pegasus sample to match an energetic drum track he’d put together.
The fact that Charlie had a job at all was remarkable. Not that his great grandchildren would share stories about his legendary days staring at a computer screen, monitoring new file uploads to a free torrent site. But in a job market with 57% unemployment, having enough cash in his e-ledger to buy street tacos and sodas felt amazing.
If he one day became Chief Content Officer, however, his great grandkids might have something to talk about.
In the meantime, his quickest way up the corporate ladder of the burgeoning underground torrent juggernaut, Napster 2.0, was to further their mission: “Provide Americans with free, reliable, user-friendly access to music — a human essential.”
Specifically, that meant he needed to curate newly uploaded songs and albums for Napster 2.0’s genre-specific landing pages, and do it better than anyone else. If Charlie recommended records that drove outsized spikes in downloads, shares, or backlinks from other sites, he’d catch the eye of his higher ups.
2.
Stepping on to the train felt like entering the inside of a bottle of black market hooch, all the city’s scraps shaking around together, begrudgingly fermenting into something sour. Up and down the car, figures in heavy jackets were silhouetted by the graffitied walls. Over the loudspeaker came the cheerful voice of the US President:
“This beautiful train you’re riding is just one of the many public sector upgrades that are sweeping our nation under the Reimagination Project. Internet service, fresh water access, even the social media apps we rely on to connect with one another every day are being reimagined. We’ve evolved the relationship between public wellbeing and big enterprise to provide unwavering oversight that protects your true interests. Those HEPA air filters overhead that provide lab-quality air cleanliness? Your idea.”
I looked up at the fan above my head. A string of dust and hair was dangling from the still blades.
“Please relax and enjoy your ride. Be kind to your neighbor. And be well.”
Two stops later the smell of tacos flooded through the train doors as they opened. My stop. Only a couple miles to home.
Recently, Danger Mouse and Black Thought hardly left the basement. They were in a deep creative state and their hermetic behavior amplified it. There was no release date looming over them, or record label pressure compelling them into this state. Record labels, along with all the trappings of the traditional entertainment industry had gone during The Disintegration.
Only now were a few nascent, unregulated record labels emerging via the black market. Label artists received modest pay, but it was pay. They got a chance to make money from their craft again, have organized tours, and collect download fees.
“This one’s ready. Check it out.” Danger said, turning the volume knob clockwise on his mixing board.
Bass fwump’d out of the subwoofers, pulverizing any notion of a world outside the basement. Kick drums, urgent monotone beeps, subtle inhalations, and spiraling whistles combined in a cyclone of organized chaos that sounded like a car chase, or a Ralph Steadman painting.
Black Thought’s nose reflexively scrunched into a gas face. “Mmmmhhmmmm,” he said, grinning. “Let me lay down a verse before the other guys get here.”
Charlie wiped the sour cream from the edge of his mouth, tossed his plate on the pile of trash next to the taco stand and hustled through the train doors before they closed. He took a seat opposite a girl about his age. She had her hood up but looked cute. Cuter than the vagrant at the far end of the car who was muttering something hostile to an imaginary assailant.
Charlie put his hood up, too, and pulled out his iPod Touch. 4:44 from the album 4:44 was playing in his headphones. He thumbed the surface of the vintage mp3 player until he landed on Streams of Thought Vol. 1, which he played from the top.
Hardly a second passed when Charlie didn’t have an album playing in his headphones. And if a computer was handy, he’d usually be scanning Napster 2.0’s internal database at the same time, looking for patterns among downloads and pageveiws.
Patterns were part of elite curation — knowing how user behavior tendencies favored certain new releases. Taste was another part of it — can you hear something, listening from the perspective of an average site user, and know if it’s good? Charlie’s personal taste often differed from the user base, by a lot. But he’d become adept at switching between their ear and his own. Every once in a while, though, an album would get uploaded that he loved and that he knew they’d love, too. Those moments were like crack.
The third part of elite curation is timing — simply being online when the next well-received piece of music hit’s the database.
The lyrical barrage of 9th vs. Thought from Streams of Thought Vol. 1 gushed through Charlie’s ear canals and he could see the words he was hearing in the graffiti on the wall above the girl’s hooded head. It was rapid-fire closed captioning presented in some apocalyptic post-modern Basquiat typeface. In his periphery the concrete tunnel walls outside the window whipped past, the lights fixed to them creating a strobe effect. The train accelerated. He got dizzy and closed his eyes.
3.
I flipped on the light in my house’s entryway which cast across the open-concept floor plan making visible the full laundry basket I’d moved from the bedroom and failed to load, a single very clean, vintage Reebok Pump sneaker laying on its side under the coffee table, and a dozen or more empty microwavable ramen bowls. It looked like a page from I-Spy: Divorced Middle-Aged Man Edition. And this was actually pretty clean.
Only since an old music industry pal had called, offering me a job at the underground record label he was working for, had my depressive fog cleared enough to even attempt to clean anything. For two years I’d wallowed in this house. I’d wake up from recurring nightmares only to live out my days in a real one. When I did eat, it was microwavable ramen. They had chicken, shrimp, and beef flavors at Grocery Reimagined, but they all tasted the same.
While I was wallowing, a robust black market developed across the country. Everything from paper products, to computers were sold there. From this primordial capitalistic sludge a music industry sprouted, offering artists an alternative to the “torrent and pray” approach Napster’d normalized. Labels didn’t have the reach of the torrent giant, yet, but we looked out for artists.
I threw myself onto the couch, kicked my shoes off, and pulled my phone out. The screen lit up. No new messages.
A$AP Rocky, El-P, Killer Mike, Black Thought, and Danger Mouse were buzzing after an explosive creative session. Black Market vodka had been added to their lemon saltwaters, and Killer mike had a huge bag of homegrown marijuana, some of which he rolled into a joint and sparked. Heads were nodding in sync as they played back their song, Strangers, over the speakers. Everyone had a look on their face like they smelled ammonia.
ASAP’s verse weaved nonchalant rhymes into melodic ear-worms, never in a hurry.
El-P bent cryptic, artistic visuals into shape — one part autobiographical braggadocio, one part gonzo journalist.
Killer Mike compared himself to god, Godzilla, and Ghostface, while threatening violence against extremist bad actors and politicians.
“Cyclops eye?! The fuck?” joked Rocky.
“Says the guy who quoted Dr. Suess,” El-P retorted.
“Ayy, at least neither of us are gonna get a hit put on us by the president.” They all turned toward Killer Mike.
“I’m the least of his worries,” Killer Mike said, “You kidding me?”
Black Thought was nodding his head to the music but it was his conversation with the A&R from earlier that was playing in his head.
His drink sat on the side table next to him. The vibrations from the music caused ripples to radiate across the surface of the liquid, bouncing off the glass and back toward the center to intersect ripples from the next vibration. The motion kept the crystalized lemon flavoring and sugar from clotting.
Charlie sat awake in bed, his face aglow in the light from his laptop. His girlfriend was sleeping next to him while he compulsively bounced from the New Uploads page on Napster 2.0’s internal database to the Most Downloaded chart, scanning data from the past 30 days, 90 days, 365, looking for patterns. Streams of Thought Vol. 2 played in his earbuds.
The little, black, Arial font letters on his laptop screen began dancing and warping in front of Charlie’s eyes. They lifted off the screen, forming a cyclone of symbols that he seemed to be witnessing from above, like satellite footage over a gulf hurricane. Lyrics from the song in his ears, History Unfolds, flashed among the whirling characters, disappearing almost as quickly as they became visible. Then he descended.
Charlie fell in slow motion, as if from a plane, toward the eye of the storm as a’s and g’s and %’s swerved past him. This happened sometimes when he looked at his screen too long. It used to happen maybe once a month. Now it was weekly, at least.
He squinted hard and let out a long exhale. When he opened his eyes, the letters were back in their places on the screen. It was time to call it a night.
As Charlie reached out to shut his laptop screen, seven small words caught his eye at the very top of the New Uploads column: Cheat Codes, Black Thought and Danger Mouse.
4. (Author’s Notes)
There was a 0% chance a front-to-back collaborative album with Black Thought rapping and Danger Mouse producing would be bad. It was just a matter of making it.
Their twelve song, thirty six minute project is an exercise in hip hop purism — beats and rhymes, samples for hooks, a few colorful guest verses, crate digging, social commentary, braggadocio. It feels so fundamentally of the genre that it conjures visions of school kids banging on lunch tables, homemade cassette mixtapes, and rap battle circles. Even the rapper/producer egalitarianism harkens back to the emcee/DJ partnerships of early hip hop.
Danger Mouse provides the project’s skeletal structure with beats that oscillate between gritty and ethereal, and create a sonically cohesive whole. His production is consistent, start to finish. He opens the album with a sample from Gwen McCrae’s Love Without Sex—belting, guttural, a warning shot—and he closes it with a sample from Tony Joe White’s For Le Ann—crooning, punctuating, gentle. To weave disparate sounds like that into beats that someone can rap forcefully over the top of, takes true creative finesse.
Black Thought enters the fray smashing shit like Bruce Banner in one of his moods. However, and perhaps this can be credited in part to the occasionally delicate production of Danger Mouse, he brings impressive variation in his tone, slowing down and meting out emphasis more sparingly on certain tracks (Identical Deaths, Violas and Lupitas) when he could easily have just kept spraying.
It’s tempting in writing about the album to simply quote at length from Black Thought’s lyrics — line after line after line of wit, word structure, ferocity, melody. Three syllable rhyme schemes, four syllables, five, all couched in a broader cultural awareness that lends the project a sense of weight. This line is just one of many that’ll make you hit the ‘rewind 15 seconds’ button:
Never no matter like a vacuum now
I turn your speakers in the back room to mushroom clouds
We on that jet fuel, about to go to Neptune, wow
That ain’t a flesh wound, they ‘bout to lay your headstone down
And there’s this one…
A thumping kicker for me to slam like Hulk Hogan
Is something like a plain bumper sticker, no slogan
And this one, too…
The black Colin Farrell in The Lobster
That’s living like an obstetrician but not a doctor
Cheat Codes landed somewhere very close to hip hop’s molten core, and its relative brevity allows you to take the full dose in one sitting. Afterwords, you’re left with the impression that they would have made this album for free, just for fun, for the sake of the art alone.
And if they somehow found themselves in an America where government reform lead to the complete disintegration of the economy, including the entertainment industry and its hefty financial incentives, they’d still make this exact album. And if they were confronted with the choice of either restricting the audience for the album in order to earn a few dollars, or releasing the album for free on the internet to give a downtrodden nation access to their art, they’d release it to the world.
