Dub Be Good To Me In Da Club Wednesday 27 May 2009

A super-simple one now... The acapella of Beats International's Dub Be Good To Me over the instrumental of 50 Cent's In Da Club. I'm not sure what's up with the version in the video here - maybe US? The one that was a hit in the UK was more reggae...



Though I liked Dub Be Good To Me about as much as the next man at the time, I wasn't really into dub/reggae much yet and just thought of it as pop really. All the same, I remember travelling to some crap "rave" to see them, cos that's the kind of thing I did at the time. Anyway, probably about 12 years after the event, looking through some records in my parents' attic, I found my sister's copy of the 12" and remembered liking it enough to steal it. And it had an acapella on it!



I used to play the 50 Cent track when it came out - there's kind of a darkness to the music I like, it almost has elements of old horror soundtrack music in the synth and strings. Or maybe that's just me.
I'm not sure where the idea to put these together came from, but I think it works a bit like the best "You Got The Love" bootlegs (more on that later!) - The originally-poppy vocal gets a bit of an edge from the music...

Dub Be Good To Me by Beats International

In Da Club by 50 Cent

Show Me Missed Calls Friday 15 May 2009

First up is the acapella of Show Me Love by Robin S over Missed Calls by TRG. I loved the TRG track when I first heard it in a Modeselektor mix given to me by a colleague, who subsequently downloaded the track on its own and gave me a copy.

I'm not sure why or when, but at some point I started to think the Show Me Love vocal would be great over it, but all a lot of searching seemed to turn up was that the acapella didn't exist. Then, whilst randomly searching for acapellas in general - it turned up, as if by magic. This was fate, so I thought I'd better do that mix.

Like pretty much everything I do these days it was done in Ableton Live. I did it to the speed of the TRG track, and the vocal sped up without sounding too odd. I knew where I wanted the main vocal hook to be and, after cutting a bizarre scat section i hadn't remembered from the end, set about chopping up the rest of the vocal in some kind of sensible structure. It's not a verse/chorus kind of thing but it seems to work.

Generally I liked how it sounded with the vocal samples in the TRG track and just edited out one that seemed to clash.

That's it - the first one! enjoy...

PS: This became weirdly timely when a fairly pointless cover version of Show Me Love by Steve Angello and Laidback Luke was a hit in the UK. They seem to be "featuring Robin S" but tho very close, it's not the original vocal. Maybe she re-sang it.

Show Me Love by Robin S

Missed Calls by TRG

On vinyl at juno / download from beatport