The Best Of Both Worlds (Collision Course - Jay-Z & Linkin Park)

Member Name: bhayanid

Product:	Collision Course - Jay-Z & Linkin Park
Date:	17/07/09 (46 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Awesome remix and some great collaboration tracks

Disadvantages: Only six tracks, not enough for me.

I am a huge fan of Linkin Park and also admire Jay Z as a rapper, and have all the albums for both these artists, so when I heard that the were making a collaboration I was ecstatic to say the least.

For those of you who are not aware Jay-Z is a world famous rapper and has a huge market appeal. He has been around since the early 90's, and is in a relationship with the superstar Beyonce. So overall Jay-Z is a rap icon who commands respect wherever he goes. Linkin park are a great alternative rock band, and one of those bands that if you get into their music then you really love them. What is quite unique about them is their two main stars are a rapper and an awesome vocalist so their music generally is a bit of a mix of hiphop beats with hardcore and soft rock.

So essentially this album takes a Jay-Z track and mixes it with a linkin park track and then Jay-Z and the two main guys from Linkin Park all provide their rapping and vocals to each track to make a stunning new collaboration. Jay-Z provides his effortless style and is one of the best at what he does. Personally not my favourite rapper, but I can appreciate his style and is great to see him branching out and looking at alternative styles of music. I guess with Linkin park it was easy for him as they already have a rapper in Mike Shinoda.

My favourite track has to be the first one that was released which is a mix of Jay-Z's Encore and Linkin park's Numb. It is quite hard to explain in a review, but takes more from the Numb track. What Jay-z does though is add his own touch and weave his magic and it does contain more of his rapping than any of the vocals from linkin park, but Chester Bennington does sing the great finale from Numb, so it really does contain the best parts of both the different worlds that Jay-Z and Linkin Park come from.

There are only six tracks on this album, and I do like them all. Of course they are not all up to the standard of the above track, but then its not exactly easy to take two random tracks from two different artists, and mix them together to make a flawless track and they do pull this off on a couple of occasions here. Maybe this wasnt as good as I thought it would be, but it is still a very good album. The only really criticism I can have is that there isnt enough tracks here to consider this true value for an album. Personally I feel that an album should contain at least 10 tracks. However the question is whether it is better to have an album with six quality tracks or twelve tracks, with four quality tracks and eight that are not as great. It is about finding this line, so its not really a true criticism.

I do advise fans of either artist to check this album out, as I can guarantee you right now that you wont be dissapointed. I feel it would be harder for them to collaborate now as Linkin park have taken a different route with their music, but then I never thought they would ever collaborate before so anything is possible.


Tracklist
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1. Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying from You
2. Big Pimpin'/Papercut
3. Jigga What/Faint
4. Numb/Encore
5. Izzo/In the End
6. Points of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer

Summary: One of my favourite collaboration albums