Digital tools let artists build new pop directly from old pop fragments

Evidence

The mash-up phenomenon culminated in 2004 with The Grey Album, a groundbreaking demo tape by producer Danger Mouse. The album combined Jay-Z’s The Black Album vocals with instrumental fragments from the Beatles’ White Album, earning critical acclaim, sparking debates over copyright, and annihilating the line between rap and rock. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 130

Categorization

• SEED: Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album is a concrete anchor for an essay on remix as the era’s aesthetic signature — could build the counter-case to Marx’s ‘blankness’ thesis around mash-ups as genuine cultural expression.
• SHARE: Send to a music-head friend: The Grey Album combined Jay-Z’s Black Album with the Beatles’ White Album, both named after colors, in 2004, kicking off the copyright wars.