the slack album

April 29, 2004 9:39 PM

The Slack AlbumThe Slack Album is the latest (for the next ten minutes) in a slew of Jay-Z Black Album remixes and mash-ups. In this case, the Black Album is melded track-for-track with samples taken from Pavement's 1991 lo-fi / indie classic Slanted and Enchanted.
posted by mcsweetie (16 comments total)

Quality, not quantity.
posted by bitpart at 9:42 PM on April 29, 2004

there are some true gems on this one. i've been loving it for a few days now.
posted by clango at 10:37 PM on April 29, 2004

My roommate downloaded this earlier today. And it just came on randomly, and when I heard Jay-Z rapping instead of Stephen Malkmus, I nearly spit out my coke.

This strikes me as about ten times better than the Grey Album, by the way. The beats just seem to match up better.
posted by thecaddy at 11:22 PM on April 29, 2004

This strikes me as about ten times better than the Grey Album, by the way. The beats just seem to match up better.

indeed! I think track 4 is the reason why mash-ups were invented in the first place.
posted by mcsweetie at 11:34 PM on April 29, 2004

oustanding, sir.
posted by matteo at 4:52 AM on April 30, 2004

man this is seriously fucking GOOD.
posted by glenwood at 5:58 AM on April 30, 2004

Wow, this shit floooows!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:48 AM on April 30, 2004

i'll have to agree this is pretty good, though damn, i think some awesome stuff mightve been done with pavement's crooked rain
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 7:08 AM on April 30, 2004

I'll give it a try but I'm already Once Bitten by how bad the Grey Album was and really Jay-Z might be someone's cup of tea but he just ain't mine.
posted by fenriq at 8:18 AM on April 30, 2004

Amazing how adding Jay-Z to anything makes it suck...
posted by wfrgms at 8:25 AM on April 30, 2004

This is really good.

From the faq, the anonymous guy says he's got a MA in music composition and it sounds like it. Sounds a lot cleaner than the Grey Album too.
posted by bobo123 at 8:45 AM on April 30, 2004

yeah, but wait until you hear my Jay-Z/BetaBand remix

*resumes work on Dry the Rain with his Black Album a cappella kit*
posted by matteo at 9:19 AM on April 30, 2004

i like this way better than the grey album. maybe because i like pavement way better than the beatles!
posted by jcruelty at 12:39 PM on April 30, 2004

I listened to the sample and was like, Um Yeah, sounds like two recordings being played together at the same time.

Maybe its just me but Jay-Z pretty much sucks balls.
posted by fenriq at 2:02 PM on April 30, 2004

I never thought we could less musically-talented than your typical electronica -- a glorified metronome for E-tards to tap their seratonin-loaded feet to -- until I discovered the "mash up" trend.

We've gone from remxing everything; taking great songs and stripping their heart and soul out, in favour of 808s and samples. Now we're just taking two random songs and combining them to create one big monolith of crap.

Maybe I'm expecting too much when I want music to contain at least a fraction of original thought... (And no, "hey these two songs would sound great layered over each other" doesn't count.) IMO, if all you can do is combine two other previously-exisiting songs into a mongrel bastard child of a track, that's not creative, talented, or even worth listening to.

I tried to get into this whole "mash up" thing, but it just smacks of creative stagnation at best, and pathetic coat-tail riding at worst. My loss, I s'pose.
posted by Dark Messiah at 11:38 AM on May 1, 2004

I don't think anyone is trying to change the face of music or anything. it's just something cool to listen to for a while.
posted by mcsweetie at 10:29 PM on May 1, 2004