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Spanish dj Osk sends along his new mixtape Blendstar, mixing vocals from various points of Mos Def and Talib Kweli's careers, focusing in particular on their time together as Black Star. As much as I like both Mos Def and Talib, I have to admit that I wasn't sure how this collection of blends was going to work out, as Talib Kweli's acapellas don't lend themselves particularly well to the remix treatment, prone as they are to wandering off beat at any given moment. It's not surprising, then, that Osk's most successful blends focus more on Mos Def's solo work. It's a tribute to DJ Osk's blending skills, however, that there are only a small handful of times throughout the mixtape when the vocals fall out of synch with the beat.
DJ Osk is at his best when he takes the blending concept a step beyond simply replacing one beat with another, by cutting up verses from different songs and combining them over a separate instrumental to create an entirely new song. For example, on his version of the Native Tongues remix for She Wants to Move, Osk replaces Pharrell's crooning with the chorus from Mobb Deep's Got It Twisted and throws it over the beat from Busta Rhymes' Don't Touch Me. The result is quite good:
Mos Def, Q-Tip and Mobb Deep - She Wants to Move (DJ Osk blend)
One other blend that worked particularly well is Osk's remix for Beef, which pairs a particularly ominous beat with what is arguably the best verse of Mos Def's career:
Mos Def - Beef (DJ Osk blend)
Osk has made the full mixtape available for free on zShare, and you can listen to some more of DJ Osk's blends over at his MySpace page.
9/09/2008 07:12:01 PM posted by Fresh