Jay-Z has been tapped to executive produce and record original music for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.
According to Reuters, Hov will oversee the soundtrack that will feature “a varied collection of the world’s most talented and compelling musical artists.” His contributions will be included alongside Craig Armstrong’s original score.
Luhrmann explained that the film’s star Leonardo DiCaprio introduced him to Hov, which led to their two-year collaborative effort. “[Collaborating with Jay-Z was] a credible and natural fit,” he said. “Fitzgerald was a pioneer, famed and controversial for using the then-new and explosive sound called jazz in his novels and short stories-not just as decoration, but to actively tell story using the immediacy of pop culture. He coined the phrase ‘the Jazz Age.’ So, the question for me in approaching Gatsby was how to elicit from our audience the same level of excitement and pop-cultural immediacy toward the world that Fitzgerald did for his audience? And in our age, the energy of jazz is caught in the energy of hip-hop. Not only is Jay-Z a great artist, full stop, but I had heard that he was a great collaborator. Leonardo and I were lucky enough to be present in a recording session over two years ago as Jay-Z was recording ‘No Church in the Wild,’ and the collaboration grew from there.”
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Jay-Z said that his respect for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic work inspired him to sign on with Luhrmann. “As soon as I spoke with Baz and Leonardo, I knew this was the right project,” he said. “The Great Gatsby is that classic American story of one’s introduction to extravagance, decadence and illusion. It`s ripe for experimentation and ready to be interpreted with a modern twist. The imagination Baz brought to Moulin Rouge made it a masterpiece, and Romeo + Juliet‘s score wasn’t just in the background; the music became a character. This film`s vision and direction has all the makings of an epic experience.”
The soundtrack for the film will be released via Interscope Records.
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