When Linkin Park and Jay-Z teamed up for the mashup album Collision Course in 2004, it was more than just a novel experiment. After all, Linkin Park had just come off their Meteora album, cementing themselves as one of the 21st centuries’ biggest rock bands. Then you had Jay-Z, who still felt the sting of getting bodies by Nas on “Ether” a few years before – yet 2003’s The Black Album was one of his most defining works to date. Still is, really.
Anyhow, Collision Course wasn’t the first mashup album of this ilk to find success. After all, Danger Mouse mashed up The Beatles and Jay-Z previously, which was part of the inspiration for this album as well. Other inspiration came from the Judgement Night soundtrack in the early ’90s, which brought together artists as diverse as Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill – proving so successful that it pretty easily overshadowed the movie itself.
The novel idea mashed up some of Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s biggest hits, including “Izzo/In The End”, and the particularly notable triple threat of “Points Of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer”. The songs, for the most part, manage to not be just thrown together – they tend to run pretty seamlessly.
In fact, the album proved so popular that “Numb/Encore” ended up winning a Grammy award. And the career boost that both LP and Jay-Z scored from it, well there’s that too. It’s not like they really needed it – both artists were very popular at the time – but that doesn’t diminish how much fun this Ep is to listen to.
