Black Thought teams up with Danger Mouse for new solo album, ‘Cheat Codes’
The album, featuring guest spots from Run The Jewels, A$AP Rocky, and Raekwon, will be released on Aug. 12.
Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter is dropping another solo album. The Roots frontman has teamed up with producer Danger Mouse for a collaborative project, Cheat Codes.
The new album will be released on Aug. 12, via BMG. The 12-track project will feature guests like Run The Jewels, Raekwon, the late MF Doom, A$AP Rocky, Conway The Machine, Michael Kiwanuka, Kid Sister, Russ, and Dylan Cartlidge.
Black Thought and Danger Mouse first announced the news on their new joint Instagram page this week. The lead single for Cheat Codes, “No Gold Teeth,” was teased on Tuesday and released on Wednesday, with an accompanying music video.
The monochromatic video was directed by the UK-based creative duo of George Muncey and Elliot Elder, known collectively as Uncanny. The song features Black Thought’s signature Philly-made vocal grit and scholarly wordplay over a blues sample.
Danger Mouse got his notoriety as a hip-hop producer when his The Grey Album mixtape, a mash-up of acapella vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album with samples from The Beatles’ White Album, went viral. He has gone on to win six Grammy Awards as a producer for acts like Gnarls Barkley, Adele, The Black Keys, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Cheat Codes will be Danger Mouse’s first hip hop production project since his 2005 collaborative album with MF Doom, DangerDOOM, which featured a guest verse from Black Thought.
This will be Black Thought’s fourth solo release. His first solo project was the 2018 EP Streams of Thought, Vol. 1, produced by 9th Wonder. Later that year, the two-time Grammy-winning MC dropped a second EP, Streams of Thought, Vol. 2, produced by Salaam Remi. His first full-length album came in 2020 with Streams of Thought, Vol. 3: Cane & Able, with production from Sean C.
in 2018, Black Thought told Billboard that he’d started recording tracks with Danger Mouse, and in a 2020 interview on Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning“, he said that they had an album long in the works, then titled Dangerous Thoughts.
“It’s a feel-good record,” Black Thought said. “It’s a record for people who got into hip hop and who evolved at the same period of time that we did.”
Tracklist for Black Thought and Danger Mouse’s Cheat Codes:
1. Sometimes
2. Cheat Codes
3. The Darkest Part [ft. Raekwon and Kid Sister]
4. No Gold Teeth
5. Because [ft. Joey Bada$$, Russ and Dylan Cartlidge]
6. Belize [ft. MF Doom]
7. Aquamarine [t. Michael Kiwanuka]
8. Identical Deaths
9. Strangers [ft. A$AP Rocky and Run the Jewels]
10. Close to Famous
11. Saltwater [ft. Conway the Machine]
12. Voilas & Lupitas
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