A mashup is when someone takes two or more songs, mixes them together and creates a new song. Obviously, this is not a trivial process as the tempos must match and they have to be in the same time signatures. This is more suited to rap as rappers don’t really care about the pitch of the underlying song (hey, it’s true) but I have heard some where the creator has matched the pitches which is awesome.
I first got into mashups when Danger Mouse created The Grey Album. In doing so he took samples from The Beatles’ White Album and mixed it with the rapper Jay-Z’s The Black Album. This isn’t just something Danger Mouse cooked up in one weekend. Every single drum hit and every single piece of melody came from somewhere on The White Album. The only problem with Danger Mouse’s work was, of course, that it was illegal because he didn’t get permission from The Beatles to do so. Luckily though, we live in the 21st century so you can find The Grey Album floating around on the net. Seeing as youtube videos for some of the tracks are still on Youtube maybe they’ve given up. I really hope they have.
Encore, the best song from The Grey Album is this week’s song of the week so make sure you check it out. The video clip is called The Grey Video (imagination+) and wasn’t made by Danger Mouse but it’s still very well done. The original Beatles scenes are from A Hard Day’s Night (the film) just in case you were wondering.
The Grey Album really woke people up to the fact that the internet can be a great distribution medium for concept albums that may not be able to be legally sold in stores and other artists started to dabble in the genre. Some of them were very average, some of them quite easily matched Danger Mouse’s very high standards. I’ll take you through a few of my favourites.
Staying on the Beatles theme for a moment dj BC mixed The Beatles with the Beastie Boys to create The Beastles. The Beastles spanned two albums of hip-hop mixed with Beatles’ melodies. Unlike Danger Mouse’s work, dj BC took much longer samples of tracks, allowing you to pick out the Beatles’ songs involved (I find it close to impossible on The Grey Album). Once again, unfortunately legal issues means you can’t find it on dj BC’s website but google may be able to assist you. dj BC does have some of his other work still up so check it out. A general rule I use is that if you’ve heard one of the songs then chances are that you’ll appreciate the mashup.
Lastly, The Kleptones are definitely worth checking out. They’ve done remixes of Queen, the Flaming Lips and put out some other compilation albums. The Queen album, A Night At The Hip-Hopera and the Flaming Lips album, Yoshimi Battles The Hip Hop Robots are obviously hip-hop based but their other albums are a little different, pulling in tracks from every direction. Check them out here.
Hopefully I’ve whetted your appetite. If nothing else, mashups have shown me that not all rap is try-hard gangsta stuff.
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