Pete Rock and “mashups”
If I hear one more person talk about music mashups without giving hip-hop its due, I will throw up, I swear.
We (and I mean we, as hip-hop) took tracks and replayed, chopped, reassembled, rearranged, deconstructed and fucked up beyond all recognition sounds with turntables, electronic synthesizers and computer software and have been doing it for around 31 years. We took other elements of music from classical, to old jazz to r & b to french lesson records and made a new creation of it.
Only when we did it, it was called stealing. It was called uncreative. It was called derivative. It wasn’t recognized as art.
Now, when people come up with these “mashups”, people lose their damn minds and call it fresh.
Sorry, it’s been done before. And here’s how and why from one of hip-hop’s strongest producers, Mr. Peter Phillips known to the hip-hop world as DJ Pete Rock.