NEUTRAL BLING HOTEL - IN MY G4 OVER DA SEA - LIVE REVIEW

Neutral Bling Hotel – In My G4 Over Da Sea

Download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?n9l8jdf1ftb1xos

Live Review

Well someone has done it, they have taken /mu/’s favorite meme-album and made a full-length mashup of it. This maybe isn’t the first time it’s been done, certainly not the first time ITAOTS has featured in hip-hop mashups, at least (NMH vs. Tyler the Creator in “Communist Future” has been a big favorite of mine, there was another one in the same era I liked too but now I forget it). But it’s the first time it’s been done on /mu/, with like a memetic knowingness of the album’s status there and full use of all the humour afforded by that. It seems like it was done by a guy name of Psycosis and he is like Girl Talk incarnate it seems. Let’s check it out.

1 King of Ante Up, pt 1

Ante Up itself seems to be a mashup/meme staple, what with Madoka’s Ante Up and the Idolmaster one and stuff. This is uh fantastic. The switchup between yells over the guitar and then dem horns over Mangum’s sacred texts. Now we move into the full verse and NMH is like not the whole beat itself but like, beat reinforcement, that’s great. This works great as an intro man these guys spit hard, shouting “ante up!” over these lines man that’s hilarious, that’s so hilarious. Thematic mashup overtop of stylistic that’s fantastic. Is this uhhh the censored version? That’s hilarious too. Repeating the sticking fork/garbage on floor/bodies are for lines with the ante up, definitely intentional, the little mixups here at the end are really really hype, GOOD JOB BASED PSYCOSIS.

2 King of Jesus Walks, pts 2 & 3

This connection is pretty natural. Woah lOLOLLOokloLol man when Mangum comes in with that famous famous line, a meme in itself, over the droning and solider type samples oh man that’s hilarious. This is one of Kanye’s better songs in terms of actually rapping I think. Oh man the transition out of the droney stuff into the second part of the beat oh man, that WORKS, how in the hell does that work? Mangum’s swingy vocals with the very strictly unswung beats, how does that work? Now we’re back to the drone for Kanye’s final argument for Christ, which I always felt was at least interesting. And then Mangum again, it is like he thinks they’re trading verses, that’s hilarious. It’s kind of interesting how he restricts the NMH side so he can sort of make a surprising effect by bringing it in really strongly, but maybe it’d be better if it always was there.

3 My 1st Airplane

We get some sustained NMH intro then OH MAN, Jay sounds great over this “beat”, they both have this perfectly synchronized pulse to it. How that work? That’s crazy man. I think this is one of the underrated Jay-Z songs from that era, everyone always thinks of it like half the other albums on that album i.e. “oh he just raps about his history again”, but the hook is really cool and he has a cool flow. Really comes out nicely here. I like that he leaves the NMH hook largely intact, it carries weight through its legacy. Always funny to hear Jay say he’s quitting. Cool sounds in the background too, he has mined NMH quite well. Woah this mixup near the end here, very very nice, very full sound and I love the Jay-Z shouts overtop. The little horn solo too, such a nice contrast with the pulse in the other elements. And another breakdown sorta thing? This works damn well, hook feels very sorrowful with the horn and all. “They can’t stop us!”

4 Look At The Two-Headed Boy

Bruv, you lying? I was just thinking about this song awhile ago when I trying to find what Busta’s best “club hit song verse” was. This is the first real lamestream trap sorta rap song. But wow this is becoming way more experimental. Very droney I still love that Earthboundy sound. Busta rapping really fast over this very droney sound with Mangum’s slow vocals is a really weird effect and it’s too weird for me to even want to say things like “works” or “doesn’t work”. Great lyrical tie-ins, look at his eyes vs. look at me now, etc. Maybe the vocals could be brought out more on what I think is Wayne’s verse here, never thought I’d say that because the kid’s voice is annoying as hell. Wait it looks like it did get louder cause he was gonna get louder, well that works. But still yeah this is very cool. Very “alien” and “psychey”, feels like the sort of mashup that ought to involve Acid Mothers Temple. This outro is pretty sweet, is this implying rappers are the “Two-Headed Boys”? Woah the world you need is wrapped in gold THAT’S IT.

5 The Fool (skit)

Hmmm I don’t recognize where this is from, sounds pretty familiar. Oh wait it’s an interview with Mangum, that’s amazing. Talking about the next album, which I guess would have been ITATOS. Cool.

6 Miami, 1981

Lol, that cracked me up. Good beat synthesis on the intro, how he gonna grow it? Lol, counting back and forth, that’s hilarious. Maybe a bit gimmicky. This beat is really solid, though, very “lush”? Professional sounding? Wow when it backed off there I had Avalanches flashbacks, I don’t evoke that lightly. And also like the Avalanches I feel like maybe this just spotlights a gimmick a little much. But rapping over this rollicking sort of beat is really nice yeah. Oh wow the integration of the Mangum vocals is hilarious and works really well. This is a “nodder”, I am actively nodding my head. All the variations he can do with this beat just by mixing up the elements is great. But it feels not quite cohesive ‘cause of like too many hooks. You know what happens with too many hooks? You tear the fish up man. That’s gross. Are these guys offering stuff to Anne Frank? That’s really really funny. “I’ve got condos you can stay” lolol, lol. Outro good, just letting it ride out.

7 Communist Mic

Woah no way, is this what I think it is? OH IT IS. Here we go with one of my favorite Nas songs on like my third favorite NMH songs. Nice slow buildup, I know what’s coming. This slow steady plodding beat is really hyped. Why is this the censored version lol, I wonder if the Gold n Fly guy made this he used this song too and I think the clean version too. Ah yeah beat evolution this is what I wanted. And they mirror the intensity perfectly, back to slow n low for the hook. And oh man, the perfect sort of antibeat counterflow on Mangum’s mumbling, I love them words. Sweet communist, this is like, share and share alike of swag. Nas building it up again through this numerology verse, here comes the intensity. My heart is racing! And the horns come in, how far are they gonna go? That worked pretty well but I was hoping maybe the second verse would get a crazier verse than the first. Burst out into sudden intensity, horns start up right away, oh man, bringing in the “yededededee” outro in during the beat, that works really well. Sorta letting this have a feeling of just falling away, I like it. This is certainly mountaintop stainingly good. Really cool integration of the sounds at the end, and Mangum gets to do his whole thing here, oh wait at least part of it. I think next track should be INSANE.

8 Oh Dougie

“Holy shit”, lol, lol. Wow this works unsettlingly well. In the intersection between extremities of artistic sacrifice and pure surface avarice, in the place between the altars of trailer park and club we have this, this new sacred land. Stuttering Mangum vocals. The lyrical contrast with “All the bitches love me”. And this is uh Chris Brown, too, right? So we can pretty easily even read into abuse sort of narratives, that is, woahwao. Is this when we lose our brain? I can’t even think coherently about the substance of the music when the idea is just so Lovecraftianly jarring. Okay but yeah we get a really nice beat here with the NMH guitars and the hip hop drums, that is like old hat at this point, but they get a good hypnotizing flow here. Now Mangum’s part extended, the vocal effects are hilariously great, amazing echoes yo. And the Dougie hook shoved back in, man. This outro is fantastic. The muted vocals man that is smart, that makes a lot of sense somehow.

9 Forgot About Ghost

LOL, what, man, when they had the guitar matched up to the Forgot About Dre beat, that’s hilarious. The flow is like... not quite matched here though. It’s good but not fantastic and I can “see seams”. Hard to synch up with this, one of Dre’s best flows, though. Horns coming in over Eminem’s verse works well, though, as did the Mangum vocal parts overtop. Horn transistion as Em transitions is really good. This is one where I think they need less NMH and more of the original beat, but the original beat is pretty minimalistic so I guess that isn’t easy. Man Eminem can really rap, can’t he? I still have this song memorized like forwards and backwards, every line is a classic. I do like how the beat has evolved between these three verses, “I’m from the streets of/New York City”, LOL. Mangum yelling over this is all amusing too. Wow yeah the fully evolved form of this beat, the Blastoise, is pretty good over the last hook at the end here, which is nicely repeated for us a few times. Pretty solid. Good outro.

10 Untitled Paint Job

LOLLLLLL, this song works already pretty well enough as a beat now that I think of it, oh man I love Ice Cream Paint Job for real, this is huge in every direction. I can’t even really speak on this, it is just too hype. This is what happens when you somehow successfully combine the elements of two songs that don’t really have elements. Like two gold bricks in a blender and then you get platinum and I am like platinum hype about this. It feels “bombastic”, like the sort of thing you would blast at the world’s coolest/lamest party. I think this is the most he’s done something that feels on paper wrong i.e. basically nothing here is on the same beat and yet he just ran with it ‘cause it felt right. I wonder if Mangum felt the same when he made the original??? Drums coming in with the roll near the end here woah man. Brought back down to like minimal, it occurs to me only now that he’s still done a sort of development/back down development cycle but it feels really really natural here. I think this is my favorite. Great.

11 There Two Headed-Boy Go, pt 2

Here we go big finale. Highlighting the weird Radioheady sound sorta thing NMH does that people often forget. Woah the stuttering of the guitar, that was masterful mashing up man. Whistling sounds work well too. This verse sounds really good, the scattered sound works really well with a nice traditional flow. Lyrical synthesis seems interesting but too lazy to think about it right now, it is interesting enough sound-wise. Oh man echoing stuff on the hook, I JUST REALIZED WHAT THIS REMINDS ME OF A LOT: Amplive’s Rainy Dayz. Yeahhhhhhh. The world needs more of these white man’s alternative rock and roll mashed up with black man’s hip hop, it is like you are reaching anticon from the other directions. But yeah this was really nice. Outro preserved, that is cool.

Overall

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This is not the blog post I was expecting to see from you

Yeah and uh I have no excuse for why other blog posts don’t exist and this one does but EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO THIS ALBUM.