Remix! Wikky-Wikky
March 3rd, 2009 § 2 Comments
Remixes are becoming as popular as beating your equally/more famous and talented girlfriend these days.
I was listening to Z104 [local hip-hop station] and there were three remixes in a row, so I assumed they were doing like a “Remix Lunch Countdown” or something…but they weren’t.
Apparently, the cool thing to do now is “sampling”. Sampling is where you take music from someone else, change it a TINY bit, and then pass it off as your own. Infamous “Samplers”: Kanye West, Kanye West, and Kanye West.
[Update] – I was informed that sampling isn’t new but it actually stems from something called “Biting” which Vanilla Ice did with his song “Ice Ice Baby” for the intro. The intro sounds a lot like the intro to “Pressure” by Queen. Biting was grounds for legal action, where as sampling is not [or maybe Mr. West is special and can work outside of the law. He is Jesus right?]
Weezy Baby
But here is something fun I learned yesterday, artists in the “alternative” genre are starting to do it now too. And they are also starting to collaborate with rap artists to give their songs a new sound or reach a new audience. Two examples that come to mind [because I downloaded them] are “Let It Rock” by Kevin Rudolf and Lil Wayne. [Rudolf also has a lot of other songs that are collaborations, one is with Rick Ross and it's really good]. The other one I’m thinking of is “Lollipop” by Framing Hanley [originally by Lil Wayne].
So what this tells me is that Lil Wayne is now a music god. He is being remixed and collaborated with like there is no tomorrow. Lil Wayne has essentially gone from being relatively unknown to being “godlike” in a matter of like, two or three years.
So bravo, Weezy, bravo.
Cody.
There’s a big difference between collaborating and just covering a song. For example, The Fray just recently covered Kanye West’s Heartless. Say Anything did a cover of Old Dirty Bastard’s Baby I Got Your Money. These would fall under the category of Framing Hanley’s Lollipop cover.
But collaborations, like Rudolf (Yuck) and Lil Wayne, are a collaborative effort, not just one person doing a song by another. For example, Fall Out Boy and….well anyone really haha or Travis Barker….and anyone.
Also, before Kanye “sampled” it was called biting. Biting a beat from anyone was grounds for official action. Most famously, Vanilla Ice, for his famously horrendous song, Ice Ice Baby, bit a beat from Queen, Under Pressure I think (of all people)…but claimed that it was a base and then a symbol in his song, instead of just the base…bastard.
Just making the distinction.
I’ll make sure to do that from now on. I was just saying that Kanye West doesn’t do a whole lot of his own music anymore, it’s mostly samples of other artist’s music. But thanks for helping me to make a distinction.