NWA’s 1989 album ‘Straight Outta Compton’ is hailed by many as one of the most seminal albums in the history of rap and greatly influenced countless gangsta rappers. Ice-T and Schooly D were the first gangsta rappers, NWA took it mainstream with this controversial and massive selling piece of profanity. The parental advisory sticker could have been invented just for this album and backlash from the ‘moral majority’ at the time lead to the album being issued with an alternative version, sans-profanity.

Over fifteen years later, Ice Cube is a film star and Dr.Dre is producing Eminem. Technology has also taken a great leap forward and in a humorous about turn Brooklyn design and technology student Evan Roth has cut up the NWA classic and spliced it back together in an edit of the entire ‘Straight Outta Compton’ album with all the adjacent non-curse words edited out. A nod to Steinski but with swearing. Like one of the college radio station WFMU’s blog poster’s comments say, “I haven’t laughed this hard at cursing since I was nine”.

According to the creator, “‘F**k tha Police’ edits down to 42.6 seconds after all the non-explicit material is edited out. This gives it a 12.3% explicit content index (much higher than ‘Straight Outta Compton’ at 7.4%)”.
Now you know. get it here, whilst its still up.

Thanks to WMFU’s Beware of the Blog

Related Links

Napster Dealt Copyright Rap by Dr. Dre [CNet News]
Chilling Effects [ChillingEffects.org]
Illegal Art Audio [Illegal-Art.org]
History of the Cut-Up [Beatmixed.com]
Bastard Pop [Wikipedia.org]

Its not exactly a groundbreaking new idea, grab an old Beatles album, mash up with random choice of other tracks etc. Still, mash-up DJ/ ‘Frankenstein Pop’ artist CCC has undertaken the not undaunting task of putting his own spin on the Beatles classic 1966 ‘Revolver’ album.

The full track listing and ubiquitous MP3 downloads for ‘Revolved’ will be up next month on its completion, meanwhile there’s five variations already up for grabs, the most promising of which is ‘Eleanor Ciccone’ a rather wonderful pairing of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light’ and the Fab Fours ‘Eleanor Rigby’ . Theres an unadventurous mash-up of the Jams ‘Start’ and the Beatles track that was the inspiration for Paul Weller, ‘Start’ and overall its great fun but not nearly as clever as DJ Dangermouse’s groundbreaking (at least in terms of column inches)‘Grey Album’.

Related Reading

Meet the Beastles [MusicbizNews24.com]
MTV Premier’s New ‘Download’ Show [MusicbizNews24.com]
Music for the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]

In the latest of a series of renegade and unofficial remix projects fueled by file sharing networks and bootlegging DJ/Remixers, electronica ‘supergroup’ the Prodigy’s ten year old hit album, ‘Music For the Jilted Generation’ has undergone the remix once over by a selection of underground DiY remixers.

‘Music For The Bootleg Generation’ has been mashed up by a bunch of ‘bastard pop’ stalwarts including, Big Bad Baz, the Digital Punkz, Mr Shaky Hands, Dunproofin and Pheugoo in a 13 track extravaganza of oft inspired but supremely flawed genius.

Its not the first time that the Prodigy have been given the bootleg remix treatment. Their last album ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ appeared on P2P networks, remixed, as ‘Always Outsiders, Never Outdone’ even before the release of the official album.

The most celebrated unofficial remix project so far was at the beginning of the year when DJ Dangermouse’s ‘Grey Album’ patched together a new album using beats and music from the Beatles ‘White Album’ and spliced the vocals from rapper Jay Z’s ‘Black Album’ over the top creating accolades and lawsuits at the same time. On ‘Grey Tuesday’ , (February 24, 2004) approximately 170 websites hosted a full copy of ‘the Grey Album’, in spite of the fact that many of those sites received a cease and desist letter from EMI’s lawyers.

After a survey of the sites that hosted files during Grey Tuesday, and an analysis of filesharing activity on that day, Downhill Battle, instigators behind the protest , reported that Danger Mouse moved more “units” than Norah Jones and Kanye West, with well over 100,000 copies downloaded. More than 1 million digital tracks.

Related Links

GYBO [GetYourBootlegOn.net]
MTV Premier’s New Download Show [MusicbizNews24.com]
Banned Music [BannedMusic.org]
Dangermouse’s Grey Album [Waxy.org]
Grey Album Fans Protest Clampdown [Wired.com]
Copyright and Music: A History Told in MP3′s [Illegal-Art.org]
DJ Dangermouse’s Grey Album Get’s Noticed [MSNBC]
Go Home Productions [GoHomeProductions.co.uk]
Boot 106 [Boot106.co.uk]
Culture Deluxe Weekly Chart [CultureDeluxe.com]