Ferdinand Sarnitz, a.k.a Left Boy, has already managed to build quite a following just by having a Facebook account and a little bit of talent. Well, more than a little bit. His well-chosen (but illegal) samples of everyone from The Beatles to Blind Faith are used not simply to capitalize on someone else’s catchy hook—they’re used to
spark familiarity in the listener’s mind and set the mood for Left Boy’s original lyrics. Take, for example, “Best Friend,” which uses loops and pieces of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” to tell the story of a romantic break up, transforming a song about God into a song about girls. Is it profound? No. Is it pop? Yes. But it’s very good pop.
Performance-wise, Left Boy is a little like Beck: His delivery is somewhere between a mumble, a rap, and an attempt at singing. It doesn’t always work. The drum-machine-backed “Saturday Night” falls flat and “Same Way (First Version) feels redundant. But then you get songs like “Wonderful Song” and “Blackbird”, both of which are built around Paul McCartney songs, that take the familiar hooks and lyrics of the originals and weave them throughout his original material, creating something that’s a whole lotta fun.
Taste a couple tunes here:
Blackbird (The Beatles)
http://player.groovebat.com/player.swf
Wonderful Song (Paul McCartney)
http://player.groovebat.com/player.swf
Get the whole thing free at his site.
Here’s a video:
