StingRhea - 17 May 2007 05:57 AM
I mean that it isn’t groundbreaking or earth-shattering, just some clever sound editing and this guy and his friend’s voices rapping over said sound editing.
It comes from the whole mixtape culture of making songs that often clearly break copyright laws.
Often samples can’t be cleared in time for an album, maybe can’t be cleared, too expensive to be cleared or not be bothered at trying at all. Guest appearances sometimes can’t be cleared in time or flat out refusal for guest appearences yet the artists still want to work together. For the artist to reach his fans, he doesn’t necessarily have a legal venue for these songs. So rather than go to waste, they’ll release them in cheap CDs that are outside of the artist’s recording contract and side step the whole recording industry’s conventional market. However generally the Mixtape circuit is also a place to publish artist’s B material, the stuff that doesn’t go on an album or just used to generate hype or anticipation for an upcoming album. This has become a whole side culture for hip hop and its usually not that good as its often freestyles (raps recorded in single takes or completely off the dome on the spot), and unmastered/unrefined works.
Anyhow, sampling (and I’ll say it) takes a little less musical know how (however a very refined sense of rhythm) thus its a quick way to make music that sounds good if you already have material you know will sound good as a sample. There are some artists like Pete Rock or even more importantly DJ Premiere of Gangstar who’ve made sampling avant-garde art paving the way for the likes of RJD2 and DJ Shadow (Premiere being one of the more influential artists of the past 20 years as he invented the subsequent art of sampling “Chopping” which Link Park uses today).
Sampling (not beat jacking) is an art and to do it even effectively does take some skill. The beats here are more quick works but still interesting as not many people would look to sampling Bloc Party (Canadian rock generally isn’t ripe for hip hop breaks). Its a little more than what you could do in GarageBand, likely done on an MPC-2500 or cut up in FL Studio, Cubase, Logic or ProTools and hardware like some sort of digital turn table.
It is essentially clever sound editing, and some guys recording but really that could be said of a lot of things. The rapping abilities of Apathy even on his mixtapes which is usually where lazy material is released is far beyond what most rappers can do lyrical by structure of rhyme and such and the distinctive rock samples without strangely even being awful rap-rock is refreshing.
So Mike prior to the album gets to show some street cred that rappers like Apathy and Celph Titled (who are on their way to being underground rap legends) are willing to trade verses with him. For Apathy and Celph Titled, the Fort Minor actually has brought in a previously untapped fan base who were fans of Mike Shinoda who aren’t familiar with underground rap. (Actually read an interview with Apathy where Apathy vouched that Mike was a cool guy and really into good hip hop music). So for a commercial artist like Mike to go solo, tapping into the notoriously fickle fanbase overly concerned with image and getting someone who’s known in circles as the real deal to say, “Hey, this guy is cool with me” is like when a friend who’s a trusted source recommends you something.
Think of a Mixtape of the rap’s way of having a really cool jam session as digital music doesn’t lend itself to that sort of thing.
