Well somebody has to write about Girl Talk's Feed The Animals, and if you clowns aren't gonna do it, I will. Craig summed up my initial feelings pretty perfectly with the short, sweet, "This album is very mediocre." After a few more listens in the car with nothing else to think about, some more thoughts:
Girl talk dropped Night Ripper at the absolute perfect moment. Most people, blogheads and basement DJs excluded, hadn't been exposed to mash-ups too much, particularly not high-density mashes like those exploding in Girl Talk's tracks. With a single album, Gregg Gillis established himself as the god-daddy of the mash-up game. Night Ripper took old favorites and obscure newer tracks, mixed them together, and formed new jams. It put the artist in mash-up artist.
That artist is on vacation for this album. Instead of an hour long song, it's a bunch of different mash-ups played into one another. Granted, they're good mash-ups for the most part, but they're not head and shoulders above the tracks released with less pomp, less circumstance, and less charge on the interwebs every day. As Zack noted this could be Girl Talk trying to become more mainstream, using more recognizable samples for people less familiar with the blogosphere music scene, but he pays the price of complexity to get that mission accomplished.
Feed the Animals lives up to its titles, throwing 14 tracks to hungry fans, desperate for anything with the Girl Talk brand. It's not nearly as punchy as Night Ripper, Bone Hard Zaggin', or his remixes, with samples enlisted in fuller form and an overall more sedate feel. In theory, Feed The Animals follows the format of the Juicy/Tiny Dancer moment of Night Ripper that makes everyone drop their pants. In reality, however, it's the urgency of "Smash Your Head"'s first half that makes the Elton/Biggie cut shine out like a diamond in the rough, and Feed The Animals lacks the density necessary to create that moment.
Zack and I talked about the album for a while yesterday and agreed that in general there are a bunch of moments that just seem like filler, wasted sonic space. Other times, mixes just straight up suck - see the Metallica/Lil Mama combo on "Like This". While there are still hidden snippets of fantastic - a Butthole Surfers riff, a Fugees guitar lick, and an Orbital sample that makes Zack cream his pants, to name a couple - Feed The Animals lacks the make-you-gasp moments of Night Ripper. Perhaps most importantly, the rap on Feed The Animals is poor at best. Unlike Night Ripper, which took songs like "Three Kings" or "Stay Fly" and improved upon them by recontextualizing the lyrics, Feed The Animals takes bad rap and makes it a different flavor of bad rap.
Sure, the "Lollipop" sample is there. And the "New Soul" intro from the Apple commercials. There's Soulja Boy and The Police. But Feed The Animals is more of a checklist of samples - a Name-That-Tune game - than the Where's Waldo hunt that was Night Ripper.
Perhaps the most disappointing cut of the whole album for me is the last 15 seconds. Not because it's bad, in fact the opposite. The conclusion finds Andre 3000 over Journey in a piano based rap that would be the perfect comedown from an epically tiring romp. Instead, it's a glimpse of intentions - what should have been. It's not a huge decrescendo but a melancholy "was that it?" that drives home the realization that I didn't exactly find what I was looking for. In the end, the album is decent, but hardly extraordinary. It's a mix that will play well at parties, will have moments that stop conversation to listen to a sample or two, will continue to make for great live shows. But it won't find the plays that Night Ripper did, serving instead as a place holder until Gillis' next effort. Damn.
Girl Talk - Like This
Girl Talk - Play Your Part (Pt. 2)
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