Music Review: Girl Talk, “All Day”
Rating: 87
In public life, Greg Gillis does two things very well. First, he crafts the best mash-up records on the planet. Then, he twists them inside and out for crazed audiences the world over, something I’ve covered for this blog in the past.
In fact these shows have proven so lucrative that he can afford to give away his record for free, though that may just be a tactic to avoid a trip to court. Regardless, Gillis is the well-listened brain behind the largest (the record clocks in at a gargantuan 71 minutes) and most sample-heavy (373, according to his Illegal Art label’s site) mash-up record ever.
All Day is that record, his fifth, which stands out from his previous body of work, boasting a handful of mash-ups that leave you scratching your head, wondering ‘How did he ever think of that?’ The combination of Soulja Boy’s “Pretty Boy Swag” and Aphex Twin’s “Windowlicker” wins that category, hands down, with the horn section from Jean Knight’s 1971 hit on STAX records, “Mr. Big Stuff” backing Wale’s “Pretty Girls” coming in a close second.
Girl Talk plays at Cain's Ballroom earlier this summer. Photo courtesy of Michael Cooper.
The listener’s reminded of the mash-up DJ’s reliance upon instant pop recognizability from the get-go track, “Oh No” where Gillis, ever the unsubtle one, lends some of Ludacris’s most powerful lyrics (“Move”) to Black Sabbath’s eternally-heavy “War Pigs” in the kind of mash-up that gets a damn party started. He anchors All Day, like all his other records, with modern hip-hop and 90s alt-rock but he’s unafraid to range out into other territory as well. The Beastie Boys hop on track during “Jump On Stage,” their terrific 1985 “got more hits than Sadaharu Oh” lyric meshing with Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” in the kind of way that gets your feet kicking.
All Day was no doubt born of on-the-road experimentation. Just be careful if you ever see him live; Hearing “Party in the USA” combined with M.O.P.’s primal verse from “Ante Up” might be enough to drive the teenagers to start riot.
–carney
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