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S*** I’M DIGGING THIS WEEK: Crunk and Dope Edition

9 Sep

Man, I really loved screw music when it was the province of fat black dudes from Texas. My adoration of the works of OG Ron C and Michael “5000” Watts and the rest of the Swishahouse family should be pretty well known if you read this site. At least once every six months I drop a post where I proclaim my love of chopped and screwed rhythms. That being said, I may love screw music even more in the hands of skinny pale white goth kids even more. In following the adage of “less is more except when more is more,” taking screw music out of the realm of purple “lean” soaked fantasies and into the realm of spooky Halloween nightmares is pure fun and high entertainment. This is one of those places where you have to be thankful for ironic hipster bullshit, as well, if ironic hipster bullshit never existed, how else could you even account for this combination. Happy accidents come from strange pairings in music quite often, as proven by 1993’s rap/rock Judgement Night Soundtrack doing things like combining Helmet with House of Pain, but, this is a horse of a different color as the province of a brand new time in music.

Mad Decent’s arbiter of all things weird and musical, (and the key man behind Maluca’s next level merengue/techno sonic sound clash) Paul Devro dropped the second volume of a mix series by New York’s Ghe20 Gothik crew who do witch house, the province of crunk meets fright better in many cases than leading arbiters of the sound like S4lem and ooOoo. Whereas The aforementioned acts get caught up in histrionics regarding grinding speeds of songs to a near unlistenable halt, the Ghe20 Gothik crew instead find quality underground crunk Southern tunes and put them through a drugged out sonic haze of being screwed and having layers of screams, pained yells, angst and agony layered on top for a perfect blend of oddball fright. I’ll leave it to our own Denman C. Anderson, a leading national purveyor of all things musically creepy that go bump in the night to let you know when the Ghe20 Gothik crew throws their next NY party, but it’s probably a good idea to take the time to listen to the mix, and or take note of the witch house sound. It’s fun, unique and here to stay.

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This blog absolutely reminds me to remind you of the brilliance of the Judgement Night soundtrack. The 1993 film may have sucked mightily, but it’s soundtrack set an archetype for music for the next millennium. Everyone who has heard, or still owns the disc has a favorite track. I love Onyx, and their title track with Biohazard is pretty amazing. De La Soul and Teenage Fanclub’s hippie boho combo for Tom Petty and the Heartreakers’ “Free Fallin'” as “Fallin'” is kinda fun. But the award for easiest and most natural sounding pairing on the album goes to either Boo YAA Tribe and Faith No More on “Just Another Victim, or Helmet and House of Pain’s “Just Another Victim.” The Boo YAA Tribe are lost heroes of West coast hip hop, their chino-sino-latino sound now back in vogue with the likes of Rocky Rivera kicking it from the Bay area, and Faith No More, after kicking Courtney Love and then Chuck Mosley to the curb in favor of Mike Patton, and everyone from Fred Durst to Chester Bennington, to yeah, I’ll say it, Eminem couldn’t have existed without Faith No More’s 1993 rap-rock classic “Epic.” And Helmet and DJ Lethal and the most underrated 32 bars in the history of 90s hip hop by Everlast make “Just Another Victim” a track worthy of a listen if you’re a hip hop afficionado, or if at any point you were a fan of any song by Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park, and yes, I know that covers about, yep, 85% of this reading audience.

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And, the track that likely started the entire screw music adoration by nerdy white kids who love hip hop and strange sounds is “Still Tippin'” by Mike Jones, however, attention deserves to be paid to the remix of “Got It Sewed Up,” as Three Six Mafia’s Juicy J goes to TOWN on the track.