I Loves me some strings

I can't lie to you, I love me some strings on a track. Managed to see Kanye West in Chicago at Lollapalooza in the summer of 2006 and he came out on stage with a 4 string quartet. He proceeded to explain why he was the best rapper alive, despite what Jay Z might claim, and that nobody else had ever done a hip hop show with classical accompaniment before.

Though most will agree when I say Kanye's a pretentious clown, he may have been right, and it's a crying shame in my opinion, because it works so well!

I remember watching The Simpsons as a kid, in the episode where they play a clip of Cypress Hill being accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra doing Insane in Da Brain and I almost wet myself with excitement. Despite looking for years, I've never managed to find a full version of the song, though I'd pay big bucks for it, so Cypress Hill if you happen to be reading this, hit me up.

Strings have been incorporated with mixed results into rock. I do like the band "Cursive" who make routine use of the cello, and anyone who knows me has heard me raving about Broken Social Scene, who use a full orchestra, to say nothing of Cloud Cult or the Arcade Fire:

They may be number one on my list of bands to see before I die...Why? Because You can't fake originality. I once saw a video of them playing one of their songs inside an elevator, ripping pages out of a magazine for percussion

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your particular taste in music), all of the aforementioned groups would all fall into the same general musical category: Not Hip Hop.

This is why I was so excited when I stumbled across the remix for this older R. Kelly joint. I liked his song "Ignition". I liked the remix he did for ignition, "Ignition Remix" (he was obviously putting everything he had into coming up with track names that day).

Now I present to you, the Ignition Remix Remix by Cousin Cole. R. Kelly, voice smooth as a glass of sweet iced tea on a Sunday Afternoon with strings playing back-up. I love it.

Listen to it here, and navigate the links to the download if you want one to have for your very own.

Feist Electro Remix

This difficult to find remix to Feist's break out hit 1-2-3-4 by Montreal duo Bikini was worth the difficulty I had in digging it up online.

I don't really like to post links to other pages for music but I couldn't find any embeddable versions.

http://twentysevenviews.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/bikini-1-2-3-4-fesit-cover-mp3/

New Kid Cudi ft. Snoop Dogg

Despite being wildly disappointed by the concert I attended in the fall, Kid Cudi still makes tunes anyone can get down to...see below:

I Do My Thing (feat. Snoop Dogg) Produced by Dr. Dre by nevercrossablackmamba.com

C-Walk to this

I like the way you workin'

I don't really like brit pop band "The Klaxxons". No particular reasons why, they were kind of just like all the other bands out there, and their sound just doesn't do it for me.

This being said, I LOVE Blackstreet's No Diggity, a true hip hop classic from start to finish. This is why I was somewhat skeptical when I noticed that The Klaxxons had done a cover of the aforementioned tune fairly recently:

Klaxons - NoDiggity (Blackstreetcover) by Schitz Popinov

To be honest, I'm really digging it, although in my opinion that's a testament to the quality of the original more so than the musical ability of these Brits...

Summer in the city

It's true! Summer is finally on its way to Toronto and in celebration I took a walk on the Danforth yesterday to soak up some much needed rays and bask in the glorious 8 degree temperatures. While I realize this is probably mother natures way of getting my guard down before she slams the city with another icy blow the the jugular, I will take what I can get for now.

In the spirit of the coming thaw, I've dug up some vintage Beach Boys with a new school electro funk twist. Enjoy:

Gorillaz for your face

The Gorillaz have just dropped their new album, "Plastic Beach", the first single from which has been waves for the past week or so. Stylo featuring Mos Def, Bobby Womack (and Bruce Willis???) is a super chill tune and delivers exactly what we've come to expect from a group whose members seem to be entirely computer generated. For all that though, they do make some serious music videos.



You can usually gauge the heat of a track on the charts by the speed with which beatmakers scramble together remixes

Chiddy Bang have proven their worth before, cranking out one of the hottest remixes out there for the track that at least for me really defined 2008, MGMT's "Kids"

I can't get enough of the dude doing the Harlem Shake while riding a skateboard at 0:42. Someone also tipped me off as to the uncanny similarities between this video and the N64 big head cheats on such classic video games as NFL Blitz and Goldeneye.

...although to be fair there were quite a few contenders for the title of best remix.

To send you on your way, a little something for the "I been lovin' 'em since..." die hard Gorillaz fans, who could forget the classic:

SoulChild also thought it'd be fun to drop a pretty hot remix for 19-2000 as well. Can't decide which I like better.

Some older Kanye

Rhymefest featuring Kanye...I'd heard the Kanye verse on one of his mixtapes a while ago but didn't realize he'd actually used it in a song he'd released. When I finally hunted it down, I liked the song but only just realized there was a video to go with it. Nothing super fresh or spectacular, but for some reason it's stuck in my head, which is enough for me to want to share it.

That boy needs therapy (Samples edition)

The Avalanche's "Frontier Psychiatrist" is certainly not a new tune, but its one I've always liked because of its sheer genius. Take a million sound samples, splice them together and lay a drum over top of the whole mess, and you've got a tune that throws you off at the beginning but hooks you and pulls you in.

I love the video so much because they didn't go the basic route of filming a montage of some sort with the song playing in the background, they actually act out each of the samples. It's fantastic, and makes for an end product that's hard to describe.

Here's another video that breaks down the individual samples. I feel like there were some late nights spent putting all this together, but the finished track was well worth it.

Others choose a different technique, sampling video clips and playing them with audio in time to the song in the background.

^That one's good but this one's my favourite

Still others play one track behind a video sample they loop and cut to use as the lyrics to the song. Shatner of the Mount is a perfect example.

Here's another example that doesn't really fall into any of the previous categories. It seems like she had 80 different music video ideas and decided to go with them ALL, yet it works SO WELL. Probably one of my favorite vids right now.

Charlotte Gainsbourg "Heaven Can Wait" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

New Drake

You're probably thinking "whoa, this guy goes on ad nauseum about the eccentricity of his musical tastes and then turns around and posts the most mainstream of mainstream club bangers?"

Um...yeah, that's pretty much it. There's a reason the blogs are a-buzz with excitement in anticipation for his new album. I can't get enough of this new Drake tune. I can't help it. Say what you want about Drake, he knows how to lay a hot track and can rhyme without sounding like he's forcing it. Considering he started out on Degrassi: The Next Generation I think the kid deserves his props

And I bet some of you thought Drake was his real name. You can't be a rapper and keep a name like Aubrey Graham. You just can't.

Anyway, give 'er a listen and you'll see what I mean.

so...I have a music blog now.

I've been posting videos to my facebook site for a while now, and the posts were getting more and more crammed with URLs thanks to facebook's refusal to allow hyperlinks.

This blog will give me the opportunity to share my unique and highly varied (some might go so far as to say eccentric) musical tastes with the world...and whatever else I come across wandering back and forth across the internets. I will try to update it whenever I have time/find something new (in all likelihood, the former will likely be the limiting factor on the post volume but I'll do my best).

Previously, I've kind of limited myself to posting what I thought other people would want to listen to, which excluded a pile music I think is great but wasn't sure I should impose on other people.

Well kids, prepare to be imposed on.