Collision Course by Linkin Park

Collision Course, the mash-up EP that jammed Linkin Park together with Jay-Z, came out on November 30, 2004, and it's exactly the stunt it sounds like, pulled off with more muscle than anyone had a right to expect. Inspired by Danger Mouse's Grey Album, which had crossed Jay-Z with the Beatles, the project started as an MTV idea for a song or two and grew into a six-track set. Mike Shinoda and Jay-Z handled most of the production, and the whole thing was cut in four days in July.

The pieces come from Hybrid Theory and Meteora on one side and The Black Album, The Blueprint and two earlier Jay-Z volumes on the other, and they lock together with surprising ease, Chester Bennington's howl riding right alongside Jay-Z's cool. Critics were mixed; buyers weren't. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 368,000 copies in its first week, and "Numb/Encore" won Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the Grammys.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.