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" There&amp;#039;s more than a hint of Jay Gatsby about Jay-Z, the Brooklyn hip-hop star who built a $500 million music empire from humble beginnings. It&amp;#039;s fitting, then, that he&amp;#039;s such an integral part of Baz Luhrmann&amp;#039;s fresh adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald&amp;#039;s American classic The Great Gatsby. Through Luhrmann&amp;#039;s lens this Great American Novel is a kaleidoscopic cacophony of sound, colour and cameras sweeping through decadent West Egg parties. Literary purists may question this Jay-Z curated soundtrack, which pulls in contemporary artists crossing varying pop genres, but period authenticity is not Gatsby&amp;#039;s MO. Luhrmann&amp;#039;s take on the material is as hyperreal as it gets, yet the spirit and excitement of the Jazz Age is filtered through the use of modern music superstars. Jay-Z himself kicks off the soundtrack (and movie) in style with &amp;#039;100$ Bill&amp;#039;, while Beyonc\u00C3\u00A9 and Andr\u00C3\u00A9 3000 team up on the much-debated cover of Amy Winehouse&amp;#039;s&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Back to Black&amp;#039; - its pulsing, distorted intro underscoring an on-screen montage of Gatsby&amp;#039;s social climb. Both, surprisingly, are eclipsed by Fergie&amp;#039;s energetic &amp;#039;A Little Party Never Killed Nobody&amp;#039;, in the background at a lavish party held to tempt Carey Mulligan&amp;#039;s Daisy Buchanan across the harbour and into Gatsby&amp;#039;s arms. Lana Del Rey, the artist on the album who perhaps best encapsulates the &amp;quot;within and without&amp;quot; nature of Fitzgerald&amp;#039;s characters, delivers the pained slow-mover &amp;#039;Young and Beautiful&amp;#039;. It&amp;#039;s a track Luhrmann keeps looping back to (in many ways the film&amp;#039;s anthem) but one you feel is a little too snoozy to be another &amp;#039;My Heart Will Go On&amp;#039;-style success. Other stand-outs include Jack White&amp;#039;s U2 cover &amp;#039;Love Is Blindness&amp;#039;, Florence + the Machine&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Over the Love&amp;#039; (the lyric &amp;quot;green light in my eyes&amp;quot; evoking Gatsby&amp;#039;s yearning for his lost love) and Sia&amp;#039;s haunting closer &amp;#039;Kill and Run&amp;#039;. Not so successful is Emeli Sand\u00C3\u00A9 and The Bryan Ferry Orchestra&amp;#039;s cover of &amp;#039;Crazy in Love&amp;#039;, which initially sounds like a cheap karaoke backing track before the vocals kick in. Like Luhrmann&amp;#039;s adaptation this is something of a mixed bag, but there&amp;#039;s no doubt it&amp;#039;ll be the perfect soundtrack to any Gatsby-themed dress-up party.  Tracks to download: &amp;#039;100$ Bill&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;A Little Party Never Killed Nobody&amp;#039;, &amp;#039;Kill and Run&amp;#039; If you like this, you&amp;#039;ll like: Jay-Z, Lana Del Rey, Kanye West Watch a Great Gatsby music featurette below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/music/album-reviews/review/a482007/jay-z-music-from-baz-luhrmanns-film-the-great-gatsby-album-review/>