All super-producers have to start somewhere. Near the dawn of Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton’s career, he submitted beats to one of his favourite rappers, Jemini the Gifted One. That collaboration matured into 2003’s landmark Ghetto Pop Life LP, which made many end-of-year lists. Born Again, the pair’s mooted second work, was recorded in 2004 and then shelved for various business and personal reasons – among them the success of Danger Mouse’s controversial, Beatles-sampling 2004 hit The Grey Album – until now. The wavy time-skip lines surrounding Born Again make it easy to hear this record in the same vein as Cheat Codes, Danger Mouse’s scintillating 2022 collaboration with rapper Black Thought. Here are top-notch Danger Mouse productions, heavy on old-school soul, body-moving rhythms and crate-digger samples. Riding high is Jemini, an undersung New York MC, full of insight, bluster, regret and joie de vivre. Locked Up is a pop banger, a strangely life-affirming rumination on drug dealing, prison and missing your family. Even breezier is Brooklyn Basquiat, hanging on a jazz flute figure, dissecting Jemini’s music industry hustle. Throughout, Jemini’s pain trades off with his playfulness; on Dear Poppa, he credits his lyricism to his troubled, absent father.
