Musical Mashups
A year back or so I just heard about a musical mash up between Jay Z's Black Album and the Beatles White Album where Dj Dangermouse used the songs from the Beatles and put Jay Z's vocals from his acappella version and called it(funnily enough) the Grey Album. I thought it had a couple of gems in it, and was quite brilliant. You can't purchase it legally anymore because Jay Z's record label (EMI I think?) pulled it because they thought more people were buying this mash up rather than the original Black Album (which is ironic because Jay Z sold the Black Album in acappella just so people could mix it with what they want).
Fast forward one year and I've recently just acquired a new mash up which is getting alot of play time where Notorious B.I.G's lyrics are put over Frank Sinatra's instrumentals, the albums called 'Blue Eyes meets Bed Stuy' (Franks nickname and the Biggies hometown). Examples of the songs were lyrics of Juicy mashed with the orchestral sounds of New York, New York, Nasty Boy is mixed with For Every Man theres a Woman and 10 Crack Commandments was rapped over Fools Rush In. Genius.
I'm wondering is this the way forward for musical sampling? Songs most recently seem to be sampled from a song put out a few years back, that was sampled from a song in the eighties, that was covered from a song in the fifties, that was based on a song in the fourties. Now we're seeing entire albums sampled and mixed up from different musical era's and bands and somehow, it's working. These works of art aren't coming from just the professionals, but from everyday consumers who work on them at home, put them online and spread the word. (I think you call it Prosumers, but that's probably not what they want to be called)
There are plenty of other mash ups around, Snoop Dogg over Led Zeppelin (one song called Drop it Like It's A Whole Lotta Love - link goes to .mp3 file)etc, and one mashup has already invaded the charts (recently Jay Z And Linken Park released a mash up to moderate commercial succss). Is this the future of sampling where it's not just a hot riff sampled off a random song, but entire song's (and in some cases, albums) cut and mixed up?
posted by Anonymous @ 3:57 pm
1 comments
1 Comments:
I remember awhile back there was a mash up of eminem and Wings. It's interesting how these rarely see commercial success, I remember hearing about the Grey Album but the liken-park mash-up album is the only one I know of which has had a commercially succesful single, however sampling is still producing many singles. I've noticed a new one, I think it was Nelly, which is playing on C4 a fair bit. I find there's something much more enjoyable about mash-ups than sampling, especially as a lot of sampling seems to go unnoticed (points to people who know what Mase's 'Welcome Back' track was sampling) but mash-ups are often two recognisable tracks ... I should stop ranting now.
Post a Comment
<< Home