Cheat Codes is Danger Mouse’s first hip-hop album in seventeen years - since his 2005 DangerDOOM collaboration with the late, great MF DOOM - and Black Thought’s only full length collaboration beyond his pioneering music in The Roots. On No Gold Teeth, Danger Mouse’s soulful, freewheeling production serves as the perfect backdrop to Black Thought’s metronomic, pin-sharp and chorus-free lyrical deluge. The result is a dizzying, thrilling opening single from two of contemporary music’s most respected artists.
The natural chemistry between Brian (Danger Mouse) and Tariq (Black Thought) comes through in the ease with which the artist and listener move through this album. Moreover, it’s an album untethered to any genre, era or trend — uncategorizeable and timeless. It is the sound of the pair observing their own culture and asking questions they still may not have the answers to.
Brian Burton (AKA one half of Gnarls Barkley, Broken Bells, and Karen O and Danger Mouse — and universally regarded as the most versatile producer in modern music) has found a formidable new partner in the incomparably prolific rapper Tariq Trotter - rapper, MC and co-founder of The Roots, film and theater actor, producer, writer or, as Hypebeast sums up: "one of the best lyricists in hip-hop history."