I just found this, I think from link after surfing off of ‘The What’ by Biggie Smalls featuring Method Man. Some of this mashup – actually, on second thought, i fucking hate that word… I’ll call it a collage …. cuz “Mashup” reminds me of those shitty napster tracks ya downloaded off Napster or whatever with Eminem plastered over an old Britney songs. Shitty. So fuck that. This is a concept album thing, kinda like the Grey Album; y’all remember that one? Well, anyway, this montage / collage / concept album, some of it’s dope. Some of it’s clumpy.
Enough of it IS dope that it’s worth a listen.Especially whatever the track around 39 and a half minutes is. That’s got the flow. The whole thing has breaks, lyrics by the rap group, and instrumentals (often cut nicely into seamless loops) played in the background. The tracks are cut with samples of Beatles fans and random interview clips and things like that. It makes sense, Wu-Tang had samples in that kinda template, and the Beatles, by the time they got passed their, “let’s take phenmatrazepine pills and stay up in Germany all night,” phase, moving on to that DEVIL’S HERB (weed) —BTW, thanks, Bob Dylan, for one of the few good things you contributed to music around the time: introducing the Beatles to that magical mystery plant…. ((and yes, Bob, ya made some great music for awhile, up until the end of the decade, then it was just blah, but that’s another rant)) ) and it was sometime around the when the Beatles were starting to smoke and drop (drop what? …. you know what as they started to go into a much more psychedelic and acid-cutty kinda sound. Not quite as much as Abbey Road or the convoluted (but super-brilliant) White Album.. but, still…
That sentence was way too long, wow. This isn’t fuckin’ Alice in Wonderland. Or maybe it is; this album combines the brilliance (and ODB) of Wu-Tang — with the brilliance (and Ringo) of the Beatles. It’s fun. It sounds like its supposed to be done this way. If you never heard either the Fab Four or Wu-Tang (first I’d ask you why) you might think this is an original. Though they don’t just take cuts strictly from the albums mentioned. I definitely recognized bits of White Album and Abbey Road. And I can’t be sure but I feel like the Ol’ Dirty Bastard was perhaps a little bit too prominent. But, that’s subjective. Just my opinion.
….Actually, fuck that, no; it’s not subject, it’s objective. Old Dirty Ringo Bastard was on this one way too much. Disagree? I bet you won’t. He’s like D-12’s Bizarre for the Wu-Tang; nobody knows exactly why or how he’s there, but he was probably friends with someone and just stuck around. The innovative style of sing-rapping (which, yes, was innovative) is something that I’m sure RZA and GZA and maybe Method and some producers completely put together for him. I mean…
Ok, enough dissing on the Dirty. That was a tangent. Just listen to the album and drop! Oh, and here’s a tracklisting…..
So there ya go. Thank you Tom Caruana!! You crazy bastard! This was definitely a fun tour into hip hop and melodic 60s mellow psychedelia. Fun stuff. And thanks to the Wu-Tang, and the Beatles, obviously!
Stay PLUR, Stay Hyphy, I’ll see y’all later!
-StrangeFlow