Collision Course is a mash-up EP from American rapper Jay-Z and American rock band Linkin Park, released on November 30, 2004, by Roc-A-Fella, Machine Shop, Warner Bros. and Def Jam. From Linkin Park's catalog, Collision Course features three songs from Meteora and four from Hybrid Theory. From Jay-Z's catalog, it features three songs from The Black Album, one from Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter, one from Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life and one from The Blueprint. Before the album, Jay-Z had released collaborations with The Roots and R. Kelly, and Linkin Park had collaborated with various artists on their remix album Reanimation.
The album was inspired by The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, which was a mash-up album between Jay-Z and The Beatles. MTV had originally planned on mashing up only one or two songs, but the project was eventually expanded to a six-song album. The production on the album was mostly handled by Mike Shinoda and Jay-Z, and it was recorded between July 16 and July 19. The album spawned one single, "Numb/Encore" which won Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 48th Grammy Awards. The album received generally mixed reviews from music critics but despite that was a commercial success. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 368,000 copies in its first week.
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Mike Shinoda revealed that he would be mashing up with Jay-Z for a record under MTV's Mash Ups show.
The network allowed Jay-Z to choose a group or artist for the mash-up. Jay contacted Shinoda, who began experimenting with mixing the tracks before sending some examples to him. As a result, Jay-Z began working with Shinoda through email. The two decided that instead of combining the existing tracks for the live performance on MTV, they wanted to re-work and re-record parts of the songs to make them fit better. Shinoda explains, "Jay and I realized it's better to re-perform the rap vocals if you're gonna do it to a new beat because the vibe changes and you have to deliver your verse a little differently." Shinoda asked his bandmates to re-record instrumental and vocal tracks as well, and ultimately both parties decided they wanted to release the studio tracks.
Sometimes, behind-the-scenes audio can be heard within the album, such as Jay-Z saying "You're wasting your talent, Randy!" before "Big Pimpin'/Papercut", or Shinoda saying "This is fun" before "Izzo/In the End".
Collision Course was the first album of Linkin Park that contained a Parental Advisory sticker, since most of Jay-Z's verses contain profanity (although Shinoda and Chester Bennington are also heard using vulgar language on the album). This album was also made in an edited/censored version. However, the clean version of the album left the words "bitch", "ass", and "hoes" uncensored, which means that "Izzo/In the End" is the same on the clean and explicit versions.
A year after the release of Collision Course, Jay-Z was the executive producer on Mike Shinoda's solo effort Fort Minor's The Rising Tied. Also, the song "High Road" from the same record talks about how some critics negatively received Collision Course.
Critical reception
Collision Course received generally mixed reviews from music critics. David Jeffries of AllMusic praised the album, calling it "awesomely fun". Steve Juon of RapReviews called the album "an experiment which bodes well since for the most part these two artists each other."
Meanwhile, Raymond Fiore of Entertainment Weekly, gave a negative review of the album, saying that the pairing of Linkin Park and Jay-Z "comes off like a sanitized nonevent." "Points of Authority/99 Problems/One Step Closer" was listed in the 2011 book 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die.
Commercial performance
Collision Course debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 368,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen Soundscan. This became Jay-Z eighth US number one album and Linkin Park's second. In its third week, the EP dropped to number ten on the chart, selling 236,000 more copies. In its fourth week, the EP climbed to number eight on the chart, selling 283,000 more copies. As of August 2009, the EP has sold 1,934,000 copies in the US. On August 15, 2017, the EP was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over two million units in the United States.
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Year-end charts
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!Chart (2004)
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!scope="row"| Australian Albums (ARIA)
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!scope="row"| UK Albums (OCC)
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!scope="row"| US Billboard 200
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