After months and months in which someone somewhere possibly said, “I wonder who’s producing the new Chili Peppers album,” our long drought of white boy funk-related news is over. In a tweet posted over the weekend, Flea revealed that Danger Mouse will produce the new album from himself, shirtless wonder Anthony Kiedis, Will Ferrell, and the other one.
Flea then deleted the tweet, perhaps because he sensed the world isn’t yet ready for such a volatile bombshell of information. Drummer Chad Smith recently spoke to Rolling Stone about the recording of the album, saying that, sure, they had done the whole “guys get in the room and jam out songs, everybody playing together all at once” thing, but come on, playing music on instruments like musicians, that’s such an old man thing to do, and the Chili Peppers most certainly are not old men. He may as well have added, “I mean, who are we, members of the Aurignacian culture, playing our bone flutes made of woolly mammoths? Please.” No, Red Hot Chili Peppers are hot and happening and with it, and so they are bringing in Danger Mouse, to please for the love of God tell them what is hot and happening these days. The artist has produced The Black Keys’ last three records, as well as the U2 album that annoyed everybody except Rolling Stone. It will be their first record made without Rick Rubin since 1989’s Mother’s Milk.
So far, no release date has been set for the album beyond a planned 2015 release. No word about how Danger Mouse is affecting the music, although presumably Anthony Kiedis will still be warbling homilies about teenage girls and navel-gazing, because some things never change.