The Los Angeles Times
Rapper Jay-Z has shown he can rock some, and Linkin Park raps as credibly as most any rock band out there, but are those enough reasons for these two masters of their domains to pool their talents?
Maybe not, but when you add MTV to the formula, things get into motion. The cable channel's series "MTV Ultimate Mash-Ups" put together the L.A. band and the Brooklyn rapper for a performance at the Roxy in West Hollywood last summer, and now it's out as a two-disc package: a DVD with that show and footage of their preparations, and a CD of the same songs in studio versions.
This is more a free-flowing interchange than the classic definition of a mash-up - a record formed from mixing two records together. Some of these tracks involved new instrumental and vocal recording, and sometimes one artist's song follows the other's rather than, well, mashing up.
It's all more fun on the DVD side of the package, especially the Roxy performance, which rides the energy and personality of the players into a loud and undemanding blowout.
The six-cut, 21-minute CD is more problematic, marked by some questionable trade-offs and a sense of struggle to transcend the gimmicky and find common ground between Jay-Z's cagey narratives and Linkin Park's introspective angst.
