Although it is labeled as a 2008 release, “Fink Ployd” has been recently made available by Metty The Dertmerchant (the producer of Sweatshop Union). There’s no way in hell a little myspace label could ever get approvals for the use of so many Pink Floyd samples, so it’s clearly a bootleg/street album/mixtape (whatever the hell they’re calling these things nowadays), but it doesn’t have an annoying DJ shouting his name all over the place, and the production is . . . Amazing.
Metty has attempted to replicate Pink Floyd’s sound, reimagined as hip hop. Where Atom Heart Mother and Dark Side of the Moon featured murmuring Englishmen in the background speaking of the profound and the mundane (often in the same sentence), Metty also includes such dialog—but it’s usually about the art of producing records. Hip Hop has always been wholly self-referential, and much of it is about succeeding and playing the game, so Metty’s choices of snippets appropriately parallel Pink Floyd’s psychedelic attempts at achieving depth through randomly placed comments.
But the real art here is Metty’s use of samples. He uses the lazy “Biding My Time” as the melody over a midtempo snare, for a “let’s get drunk” rap by Kyprios who says that if he could turn water into wine, he’d be “faded forever.” Then he burps, loudly and obscenely. In this way, Metty turns a fairly dull Floyd song into something energetic and hilarious. On “I’m So Beautiful,” featuring occasional MF Doom collaborator Moka Only, Metty creates a sound like what Everlast used on his Whitey Ford album (before he started sucking hard). It’s a great, dreamy trip—and usually psychedelic rap doesn’t work for me. On the “The Last Gig,” we get a solid rap by Uno over a truly inspired homage to Dark Side’s greatest gig. The album also includes appearances by Sweatshop Union (of course), Rob The Viking of Swollen Members, Mos Eisly, and others.
Full tracklist and link to the mixtape below. This may end up as one of my favorite mixtapes of the year.
1. Gates At Dawn (Intro)
2. Till The Cows Come Home
3. Wasted Time ft. Kyprios (SSU)
4. I’m So Beautiful ft. Moka Only
5. I Just Trip ft. Fatty Down
6. The Last Gig (Uno)
7. Shine On ft. Mos Eisly (Dirty Circus/SSU)
8. Bullshit ft. Conscience (Innocent Bystanders/SSU)
9. Wish You Weren’t Here (Inst.) Rob The Viking-Swollen Members
10. It’s All Bad ft. The Trillionaires
11. The Law Of The Jungle ft. Mos Eisly (Dirty Circus/SSU)
12. Atomic Mutherslover (Outro)
13. Evil Has Problems (bonus) ft. Evil
BONUS: MORE PINK FLOYD HIP HOP!
Of course, everyone knows about Wyclef’s cover of Wish You Were Here. It’s pretty good, but Wyclef is a little too bland for my tastes. Here’s two great hip hop Floyd tunes . . .
