There’s probably no form of music more soulless than the mash-up, that chimera created for the most part by Internet-savvy kids with cheap sound-editing programs. Sure, the synergy of a mix can sometimes outshine the source material–50 Cent meeting Nine Inch Nails, Missy Elliott fronting Joy Division—but most mash-ups are musical one-liners, exercises in irony good for a quick laugh but rarely a second listen. The form just came into its own in the early 2000s, but Gawker’s music blog Idolator (among others) has already declared it dead.
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Part of what makes the Hood Internet’s mash-ups so compelling is that Reidell and Brink, who also play together in the local rock band May or May Not, clearly like the indie rock and rap songs they’re mixing equally. Free from the smirking irony that’s de rigueur in the scene, they piece them together in a way that makes the disparate genres work off each other rather than compete. Almost every weekday since late March they’ve posted a new track (complete with a Photoshopped publicity shot) to thehoodinternet.com, and while the results are inherently ridiculous–coke rappers Clipse + a synth-happy instrumental break from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah = “Clipse Your Hands Say Wamp Wamp”–they’re also brilliant. I’ve been playing their newly posted first mix tape as much as anything in my current rotation.
Both started making hip-hop music in college (Reidell at the University of Wisconsin and Brink at the University of Michigan), crafting beats and rhymes in what Reidell describes as “silly little rap group experiments.” Those projects didn’t go anywhere, but the skills Brink gained using production software put them where they are now. “Clipse Your Hands Say Wamp Wamp” was essentially an experiment to see how indie rock and rap would mix. Brink sent a copy to the tastemaking indie-rock blog Gorilla vs. Bear, which received it enthusiastically. Reidell—who’s obsessed with straight-to-video hip-hop movies–had registered thehoodinternet domain, inspired by a minor character from the Cam’ron film Killa Season, and he and Brink planned to use the site to host other people’s mash-ups, specifically ones using laughably obscure source materials or ones that just turned out laughably bad. Encouraged by music blogger buzz over their first track, they began making and posting their own indie rock-rap hybrids instead. They got the site going March 26 with “Rock Yo Sea Legs,” which mixes the Shins and Crime Mob, and have since maintained a surprisingly high baseline quality. Occasionally they’ll even blow right past it to an OMG level that’s close to the old Missy/Joy Division classic.
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