Songfacts®:

• "Paper Crown" is one of those songs that defies easy categorization. It's a high-octane fusion of rock, hip-hop, and funk that features vocal contributions by both Beck, the hipster king of indie rock, and Juicy J, the Memphis rap legend.
• Lyrically, the song is a playful yet insightful meditation on the notion of freedom, individuality, and the masks we wear. A paper crown, you see, is a cheap knockoff of a real crown. It's meant to be fancy, but it's really just a flimsy thing that can be easily crushed. The Black Keys and their pals are basically telling a love interest, "Hey, let's ditch the fake stuff and be real for a change."
• The Black Keys have a long history with Beck dating back to the early 2000s. They met him at a party and gave him a copy of their album. To their surprise, Beck asked them to be his opening act on tour. It was a big break for the boys from Ohio.
  
  "Beck gave us a really good shot early on," Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys told The Sun. "It was huge for us. We'd never played big beautiful outdoor places like Red Rocks before."
• "Paper Crown" is one of seven tracks Beck co-wrote with The Black Keys for their album Ohio Players. He also lays down some smooth organ melodies on this song.
• "Paper Crown" started out as a straightforward collaboration between Dan Auerbach and Beck, but while working on the Ohio Players album, the duo were immersing themselves in Memphis rap, listening to mixtapes by the likes of Little Noid and Tommy Wright III. These gritty underground sounds became touchstones for the record.
  
  One day, while cruising around Los Angeles and listening to the beats of Houston's DJ Screw, the thought struck The Black Keys - why not try something like this? Something with that slow, syrupy, chopped-and-screwed vibe. So, they tracked down Little Noid on Instagram. He came to Nashville the next weekend and laid down a verse for "Candy and Her Friends."
  
  But you can't just toss in a single track with that kind of flavor and expect it to blend seamlessly into an album. "I felt we needed to do it on another track," Auerbach told Uncut magazine. "Paper Crown seemed like the song to try that with, because it's already got this funky field to it. We ended up getting Juicy J from Three Six Mafia."
  
  What's cool is, it was Juicy J who discovered Little Noid when he was 15 years old and put him on a mixtape.
• When The Black Keys sent "Paper Crown" to Juicy J, he sent his vocal contribution back two days later. "J also put the scratching on the top of the song," Auerbach told The Sun. "We would never have thought to do that, but he felt compelled. It's a collaborative record!"