By Daniel Paiz

A Week’s Worth Album Review digs into a project not expected but grandly welcomed, a second collaborative album from Danger Mouse and Jemini the Gifted One entitled Born Again. These two first linked up in 2003 with the timelessly fun album Ghetto Pop Life. If you missed that project, you missed “Medieval”, “Born-A-MC”, and “Take Care of Business” amongst a slew of other jams. Danger Mouse has since had an impressive range of collaborators, from Black Thought and Karen O to The Gorillaz and Beck. Jemini has released music as well, just not as prolifically or to the same acclaim as his fellow collaborator.

This project picks up where 2003 left off, composed of some timeless sounds.

Standouts

The sonic landscape that Jemini gets to rap over is impressive. Danger Mouse continues to craft sounds and beats that draw the listener in, and mesh well with this rapper. “Locked Up”, “Born Again”, and “Brooklyn Bazquiat” are the tracks that invited this listener the most times to start from the beginning and listen again. This album doesn’t possess a grander conceptual message for the most part, but it does a good job of pulling lessons out of experiences in life.

Jemini delivers experience to listeners via experience and how the music industry has shared some lessons along the way. “Brooklyn Bazquiat” in particular highlights what a few lessons are for the Brooklyn-based emcee, including the following:

You don’t come to a gunfight with a knife,

I’m talkin’ about the line you sign,

not the rhymes you write,

cuz once you sign the line ya ass is grass

Brooklyn Bazquiat

This reminds one of the entrapment that happens with 360 deals where the record label determines everything, and the artist has little to no control whatsoever. It also broaches the topic of making sure one learns about the business aspect of the music industry, doesn’t get taken advantage of, and realizing that art and commerce go hand in hand.

If you’re ill-equipped to navigate this side of music, things won’t turn out as the rose-colored hue one might’ve hoped for from the start. Artists just starting out might get overexcited, and ignorance pays well to the industry. Jemini hasn’t made a whole lot of music outside of these Danger Mouse collabs, and this could factor into why that is.

Other lessons learned from the wisdom of age and experience include being authentic and staying authentic. “Walk The Walk” and “Born Again” both get into this. The former gets into the importance of recognizing the game being played by those in power, and how distraction leads to planned action as the masses wonder what happened. The latter contains two important ideas.

First, the music world teaches one to learn and create your musical self, and to not chase trends or what others are. Second, this title track does its job in expressing the importance of renewal and restarting one’s goals and efforts in something that drives them, in something they love. All of this is expressed via accessible bars laid down over beats ruminating in the essence of Hip-Hop.

Feedback

A big surprise from this surprise album is that it appears there are no guest features. The 2003 project had a slew of guest appearances, such as The Pharcyde, J-Zone, and The Alkaholiks. Perhaps this is due to the occasional focus of today’s Hip-Hop emcee or group trying to achieve what J Cole did, where no features led to grand success. However, it’s difficult to say, because this project was recorded in 2004 and then shelved, so it might’ve been that this fresh duo wanted to primarily showcase themselves this time.

Features don’t make the 2003 album; they just add a bit of extra something to it. These ten tracks are pretty solid, and Danger Mouse has the touch of making timeless-sounding music. The last three to four songs don’t sound as collectively strong as the first six or so for this listener. It might be due to the song topics not being as connected to the larger themes listed above. Perhaps a few more tracks might have united themes from the first half of the album closer to the themes at the end.

Final Verdict

Nostalgia hits hard when listening to this album, if you were a big fan of their previous album. It’s hard not to make comparisons between two projects recorded nearly back-to-back. This album has amazing beat production as Danger Mouse yet again shows the world how to create timeless sounds. Jemini gives quite a solid rhyming effort, reminding listeners of his skillset.

10 tracks at around 36 minutes are very indicative of modern times, which is intriguing seeing as how this was made nearly two decades prior. A longer project might’ve led to a slightly more cohesive ending, or it might have turned this project into more of a collection of songs as opposed to a full album. There is nothing wrong with either. If you enjoy Danger Mouse and Jemini, you will enjoy this project.