World Tour (Weezy, Wale, Dre) – Brenton Duvall
I am woefully behind the times on some subjects. In spite of the fact that I write a music blog (new media!) I have never fully understood what was going on with mixtapes and mashups and remixes and the like. I also simply don’t pay enough attention to the whole milieu of this stuff to be able to figure out when something is a pure mashup, when new effects have been added, and when something is a collaborative work between an artist and a producer.
Add to that the fact that there are millions of these things floating out there now, most of them seemingly terrible, and it’s hard to know how to find the gems.
Fortunately, I read this post from Neon Gold about Brenton Duvall, which has given me at least one surefire winner to turn to. He’s got about 20 tracks available to listen to and download at the Potomac Boys Club page, and they are ALL really good. You get Lil’ Wayne over “Sleepyhead,” Jay-Z over Jonsi, and some tracks from Young Prince produced by Duvall that provide an electro-dance inspired background with an almost jazzy feel, and some great emceeing. It sounds young and exuberant and totally magical.
By far my favorite track right now, though, is “World Tour” which picks out the chorus of Wale’s “World Tour,” and supplements it with raps from Lil’ Wayne and Dre’s “Forget About Dre,” placing each of them against a shimmering, beautiful, insistent background of electronic The resulting creation sounds totally distinct and organic – it’s almost impossible to picture these pieces in their original form. The Dre part, in particular, is utterly different. What came off as aggressive and petulant when backed by Eminem now sounds strangely humble, even hopeful.