After receiving adulations from various media
outlets for creating The Grey Album, Danger Mouse now must face the repercussions
of tampering with music by the Beatles.
EMI Records has issued cease-and-desist orders
to the producer, as well as independent retail stores and Web sites that have
been selling the CD.
Though Danger Mouse knew pairing Jay-Z vocals
from The Black Album with instrumentation from the Beatles’ famed White
Album would land him in trouble, the producer told AllHipHop.com in a recent
interview that he had to put his creativity over anything else.
"It’s illegal, I know that and it may get
me in trouble, but if I had thought about that I would have never made what
I thought turned out to be one of the best things I ever did," he said.
While DJs and producers have created other hues
of The Black Album, such as The Brown Album and The White Album,
don’t expect those to be pulled from shells.
The difference from other Jay-Z remixed albums
is that Danger Mouse dared to use music from the Beatles catalog.
Sony Music and Michael Jackson own their catalog
in a joint partnership and EMI Records controls the sound recordings.
Danger Mouse only pressed 3,000 copies of The
Grey Album, and he said that he hoped the limited copies would protect him
from further legal action.
