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‘How long have you been black?‘. Knockout. About time someone took that annoying BBC News ass-monkey Jeremy Paxman and spanked him. I wonder if this is pay back for the time Jemermy Paxman Spanked Dizzee Rascal
Mixtape Name: Blue Magic
Created By: DJ Ruthless
Overall Rating: 7 out of 10
Reviewed by: Raj Lovesoul
Currently, there are more American Gangster remix albums on the internet, than all the actual retail Jay-Z albums put together. This is because Jay-Z has been releasing his album acapella’s for some time. I’ve had the ones since The Blueprint, and they’re great pieces of work in their own right, (that’s right…with NO music). DJ Ruthless is likely the last one to get his through the door here at the lovesoul studio, and that’s because he proves that he knows what works for the God MC, but he kind of tells us what we already know.
The thing about this remix, versus say Chong Wizard who stuck with one very clever theme [see review], is that Ruthless has remixed this album with very familiar instrumentals, which may or may not work for you. For me, it excelled when I could tell that he’d had a proper dig in the crates. Minus the ‘Jay sounds good on every Kanye beat’ rule of thumb, he created a good finished piece of work, that sounds like it was A&R’d better than Puffy did to the actual American Gangster, so Bad Boy, you can find the UK’s DJ Ruthless here.
And now the harsh breakdown… ‘Sweet’ is absolutely incredible and if it was a finished record I would buy it in a heartbeat. ‘Pray’ over Common’s ‘The People’ is good, but the choir vocals are way too loud. ‘No Hook’ sounds beautiful mixed with The Alchemist beat, and quickly recovers the garbage Lil’ Wayne verse that comes before it on ‘Hello Brooklyn’ (Ruthless inadvertedly highlights how much Weezy sucked on that cut).
‘Roc Boys’ and ‘Party Life’ are a little monotonous, but the former is proving hard to remix on many of these tapes as the horns are so idiosyncratic in the original. Once again, Ruthless stays true to his name, gets off the mat and throws out an incredibly hard ‘Ignorant Shit’ over a broken old school break loop. ‘Success’ over Kanye’s ‘Breathe Easy’ loses some of the grandeur associated to the original BK/QB collabo, as does ‘Fallin’ during the female hook, but the Dilla produced ‘Money’ beat SMASH’S on the American Gangster title track, ending the tape hard.
Ruthless has a lot of potential in making these tapes, and by staying in the hard head lane, he highlights the Shawn Carter of old, which is what American Gangster set out to achieve. Definitely one to download asap and a DJ to watch out for. And finally, the Mixtape cover speaks for itself, it must have been chosen by a good A&R…
You can download DJ Ruthless’s Blue Magic here, or hit him up on his MySpace here.
The below video leaked onto DailyMotion today, and will get taken down very soon (the previous version to this ALREADY did in less than a few hours). So enjoy…
For the first time in a looong time, I think Jay-Z has done an exceptionally bad video. Could it be that budgets are being cut, or the album didn’t sell enough, or is it a commercial for an upcoming American Gangster Tour DVD? Who know? But Jay, you told us this was going to be a ‘cinematic’ piece of work? We don’t see that in this video, we see you on stage, alone. That is, except for that big ass bouncer who stopped me from saying hello to you a few months ago in NYC. Still, If we dubbed over the lyrics of any other of your songs, it would be equally unimpressive. Where were the wide angle lenses, scene’s, actors, etc? Sh-t, even a poster of Beyonce in the background would have helped, as she was on the record. The final mastered record was very grand, the video was amateur. We look forward to the re-shoot…
