It’s not a black and white issue.

At the epicentre of perhaps music’s biggest hoo-ha right now is American hip-hop agent provocateur Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, aka DM. This crafter of beats par excellence is much given to mischief and witty sample soldering, and his new “art project/experiment”, The Grey Album, consists of sampled musical excerpts from The Beatles’ White Album welded to the vocals from Jay-Z’s Black Album. This monochrome-monikered yet playfully psychedelic mélange is a fine listen. It has, however, successfully and substantially riled the bigwigs over at EMI.

The major label’s legal eagles promptly put a ban on The Grey Album’s “copyright infringement” of The White Album by serving “cease and desist” orders to DM and the record shops stocking his enfant terrible. Undeterred by EMI’s curmudgeonly party pooping though, Danger Mouse has responded in typical fashion with the following statement: “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da life goes on bah / Lalala how life goes on / Ob-la-di, ob-la-da life goes on bah / Lalala life goes on”.

Despite EMI’s protestations, theirs is a somewhat impotent gesture. The Grey album is now well and truly out there in the form of numerous promotional CDs and, more tellingly, an escalation of borrowed, burnt and downloaded copies that has proliferated as The Grey Album’s notoriety spreads.

More tellingly, February 24 2004 saw a massive online shout-out, dubbed Grey Tuesday, that called upon the planet’s inhabitants to download DM’s Grey Album in protest at the arbitrary nature of sampling laws. Initiated by downhillbattle.org, a music activism group, Grey Tuesday (“a day of civil disobedience”) aimed at highlighting the way “major labels stifle creativity and try to manipulate the public’s access to music”. In total, 400 sites (170 of which openly risked being sued by EMI) hosted a full copy of The Grey Album available for downloading.

The Grey Album is primarily a “respect due’ album from Danger Mouse to the artists he “loves”. It’s a positive, life-affirming piece of hip-hop remix history that means more than the sum of its parts. The Grey Album is, however, a party that represents the David and Goliath nature of creativity vs commerce. Far be it for us to suggest you seek it out. Stuart Turnbull 27 February 04

DM & Jemini – Ghetto Pop Life, out now on Lex Records.