In his article “At Last, the Mash-up Has Gone Mainstream,” Newsday writer Glenn Gamboa continues the recent trend of declaring mash-ups old news and officially mainstream. He even makes this claim about the Jay-Z Collision Course album:
When music historians 25 years from now look back on the origins of mash-ups, “Collision Course” will be seen as the groundbreaker, achieving what “Rapper’s Delight” did for hip-hop, breaking it down to a level that regular folks could understand.
An interesting claim, but come on — rap-rock has been around for ages. Run DMC anyone? And MTV really isn’t that late to the game (he describes them as “chasing the trend”) — a mash-up video show has existed on the MTV’s UK version of the channel for a while.
It’s an interesting read. However, I cringe every time I see an American journalist forget that none of this was ever invented here, and that perhaps the only reason it arrived state side is because it’s mainstream to begin with. Or at least that’s my take on it.
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“Though remixers have had access to those tracks for years, this year, Jay-Z had the foresight – one of many reasons he’s the perfect choice to be president of Def Jam Recordings – to release an unprecedented a capella version of his “Black Album” raps so mash-up makers wouldn’t have to go to Kazaa or Grokster to get them.”
Ugh. Such naivety betrays the guy’s ability to research. Assuming that acapellas just magically “appear” on P2P, as if they can be perfectly synthesised from any existing track…
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