JAY Z AND LINKIN PARK
- COLLISION COURSE
By Brian Elwell
What do you get when you
put together a veteran rap star and a revolutionary rock group?
Collision Course. Jay-Z and Linkin Park try to capitalize on the
theory of: why make new material when you can change the old stuff,
repackage and resell? On this extremely short album of six songs
Jay-Z either raps over slightly remixed Linkin Park songs, or
Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda talks over Jay-Z’s older
songs.
At first glance it appears that Linkin Park has put out quite
a few CDs themselves, but really they have done just what they
did for this CD; remix the same material. In late July of 2002
many Linkin Park fans were stoked to get their hands on another
CD after their first groundbreaking album, only to learn that
the “new” CD was just a remix of all the tracks from
the first CD. So Linkin Park is used to this repackage, resell
idea but this is totally new for Jay-Z.
This CD came out after Jay-Z released his tenth album, then called
it quits and moved on to producing rather than putting out any
more CDs. Then just a few months later he was doing albums with
Linkin Park and a CD with R Kelly. Has he really stopped? Unlike
the R Kelly CD, Collision Course came out on Linkin Park’s
label, Warner Brothers. So is Jay done? Or is he going to keep
putting out these combination albums to try to make some more
money?
Now, with only 6 tracks there isn’t much to review here,
and since there is nothing new other than some banter before and
after each track, the CD is quite disappointing. Out of all the
tracks there are only two that I enjoyed listening to, where as
the rest are just annoying because of the lack of remixing or
because we have heard the same Linkin Park song a million times
on the radio. Bottom line it’s just not interesting enough.
When the CD first came out it was priced at a $30, because of
the DVD included in the package. After realizing that no one would
buy a CD for 30 bucks DVD or not, it dropped down to $15-$20.
The DVD is the group performing the tracks live at a club, and
really couldn’t be more disappointing. These two discs are
not in line with either of the artists’ quality and over
all, sounds rushed. Is it worth buying? Not by a long shot. Worth
a download or two? Sure, if you’re a fan of either artist
and don’t mind rap.
