BlakRoc, the collaboration between The Black Keys, Damon Dash, and some of the biggest MCs in hip-hop, like Mos Def, Q-Tip, and RZA, was released last Friday, Black (or Blak) Friday, and NPR covered the event with a segment on Morning Edition that day. The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney spoke with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep about the project's beginning and how it all came together in the studio in less than two weeks. You can listen online at npr.org.
 
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There's much more behind the scenes in an article in the Washington Post's Express Night Out, which includes a track-by-track breakdown of the album from Carney. The article describes the Keys' contribution as "guitars, drums, bass and keyboards, sampled and looped—a mix of gritty, jazzy and psychedelic beats that occasionally sound like rock songs, but more often resemble those of Wu-Tang Clan." Read the article at expressnightout.com.

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In the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, writer John Jurgensen looks at a number of earlier efforts to bring rock and hip-hop together with varying levels of success. Of BlakRoc, Jurgensen says that The Black Keys offer "a dirty blues sound and the credibility needed to attempt such alchemy." He credits the band's contribution of "spare, haunting musical loops" with keeping BlakRoc on the right side of such projects, helping it "sidestep typical rap-rock showboating, while evoking a classier hybrid from the past." Read more at blogs.wsj.com.

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The Village Voice sees BlakRoc in a similar vein. Writer Phillip Mlynar says that for all the concern others' attempts at the bringing together of rock and hip-hop, "BlakRoc works despite such skepticism, because the Black Keys have always laid down the type of bumptious but bluesy backing tracks you'd imagine RZA or Q-Tip happily sampling themselves, were they to stumble across them in a box of old vinyl." Mlynar concludes: "The emcees and the rockers sound natural together, not forced, and often they actually improve one another." Read more at villagevoice.com.

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In the UK, where the album is out next week, the Guardian's Observer might agree, giving the album four stars. The project participants "take things right back to basics," says the Observer's Gareth Grundy. "The premise is simple, but effective." Read the four-star review at guardian.co.uk.

The Independent takes its own look at BlakRoc in the context of its predecessors and concludes: "The group's self-titled album is a success story that has found critical acclaim across the board." The article quotes Pharoah Monch, one of the project's MC's, as saying it all just confirmed something he'd known: "Great rock music and great hip-hop music, fused together, can create undeniable greatness." Read the article at independent.co.uk.