Thinkcage

There was a funny exchange in an episode of South Park a few years ago in which Chef and Mr. Garrison discussed how white people have been appropriating black culture:

Mr. Garrison: Chef, what did you do when white people stole your culture?

Chef: Oh. Well, we black people just always tried to stay out in front of them.

Mr. Slave:[straightens up] How did you do that?

Chef: Well, like with our slang. Black people always used to say, “I’m in the house” instead of “I’m here.” But then white people all started to say “in the house” so we switched it to “in the hizzouse.” Hizzouse became hizzizzouse, and then white folk started saying that, and we had to change it to hizzie, then “in the hizzle” which we had to change to “hizzle fo shizzle,” and now, because white people say “hizzle fo shizzle,” we have to say “flippity floppity floop.”

Now I’m not going to claim this has anything to do with Black culture but I do feel a little like a soccer mom listening to 50-Cent on a Top-40 radio station as I write this. You see, even a year after DJ Danger Mouse’s, The Grey Album hit us over the head with the possibilities of the genre, I still didn’t get the whole mash-up scene until just recently. So believe me I know that I’m way off the bloggerati radar when I try to declare just how cool this is. On a blog in 2005 no less.

But I get it now. Mashuptown has shown me the way. There are a lot of types of mash-ups, but I think the ones that really appeal to me take two songs and make them better. A perfect example is today’s link: Callin it back by Banders and Mash, which is a mix of AC/DC’s Back in Black and Lyrics Born’s Callin it out. For me this one really shows the power of a mash-up to take a song like Back in Black, strip off the cheese, and use it to power a great rap lyric. Rap has been tough for me to listen to partly because I just dig guitar rock. But the sheer cheese factor and terrible vocals of AC/DC really make you forget how good that riff is. Problem solved.

Also worth noting is Spending one of these nights with Kelly’ by Aggro1. I’m not a real big fan of either original song but I have to say that this mash-up is so great because it just feels natural. Fantastic.

Catch ya later at the flippity floppity flop.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.