« After the Chill It's The After Chill | Main | WXYC Won on Jeopardy! »
April 20, 2004
Slinged and Blinged
Yeah, the Grey Album media frenzy probably poured a little too much kerosene onto the already blazing Jay-Z Black Album remix craze. I'm all about sampling and amusing mashups and willful copyright violation and even just gimmicky ideas with overly clever titles. But The Double Black Album is just kind of monotonous and The Black and Blue Album is worth a few good novelty laughs until you realize how badly off-time some of the mixes/mashups are. So I thought I'd reached my saturation point with all of these Black Album offspring, but then I was skimming through Royal Magazine, which pointed me to a brilliant idea that actually seems to be implemented pretty damn well: The Slack Album!
From what I can tell, this DJ N-Wee guy actually knows how to make hip-hop beats and it's great to hear him chop up unlikely candidates like "Zurich is Stained" and "Here" and give them a clipped almost-Prefuse-73-ish bounce. And the one straighter mashup that I heard ("Encore"/"In The Mouth a Desert") is just genius with the way the "HO-VA" chant comes on top of those high squealing Pavement-y guitar bits.
While I was thinking about Slanted and Enchanted, I remembered that it actually came out about this time of year...so I did some quick research and found out that today (4/20) is the 12th anniversary of its release! In tribute, I listened to Luxe and Reduxe a couple of times today....and enjoyed every minute of it.
Posted by Tim at April 20, 2004 06:56 PM
Comments
what do you think about 'black is back' by durham's own producer extra-or-dinaire 9th wonder bread???
Posted by: cia at April 21, 2004 01:11 AM
Sadly, I must confess that I haven't heard that one yet. But I'd like to, I liked God's Stepson. I wonder, does he even remix "Threat"?
Posted by: Tim at April 21, 2004 08:15 AM
So when Simon Reynolds or some other opportunistic journalist sits down to write the definitive history of the mashup in a couple of years, will they cite the Evolution Control Committee 7" as the first? Or is there some Plunderphonics or Negativeland piece that will predate it?
I was thinking of this, cause there's a big Danger Mouse article in the new Spin- haven't read it yet- it's Spin so I'm not getting my hopes high (although Klosterman is starting to grow on me after I finished Fargo Rock City).
Posted by: Stuart at April 21, 2004 11:31 AM
i do think 9th remixed Threat--but intrestingly not "Change Clothes". apparently there was nothing he wanted to change. them crazy neptunes. so i heard anyway.
Posted by: meredithN at April 22, 2004 06:59 PM
if i remember, i'll bring a copy to the kickball game tomorrow.
Posted by: cia at April 24, 2004 12:42 AM