Review Summary: Not as bad as you think.
In an age where Amplive and Radiodread can take hip hop beats, put them behind some of English quintet Radiohead's best songs, and garner near universal critical acclaim, the bounds for Radiohead experimentation appear limitless.
Is Crunk-Radiohead past the limit?
Crunk and Radiohead are not the ideal Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of music; that is, these are two great tastes that should not taste great together. The culprit of said mash-up is DJ Gyngyvytus, a Californian record spinner whose
Skeet Spirit (no, really, that's the name) project gives us the odd combination of mainstream American Crazy-Drunk ("Cr-unk") music and the music of notoriously paranoid artist Radiohead.
Whatever you're expecting from this point in is likely to be exactly what you're going to get. DJ Gyngyvytus' formula to this devilish concoction runs as follows: Take some of Radiohead's greatest hits from the pre-
Amnesiac era, put a two-step beat behind it, and add gratuitous amounts of monosyllabic questions and answers (
"WHAT?" "YEAH!"), et voila: a two and a half minute bastardization of the original track that barely shares any melodic similarity to the Radiohead song said bastardization is based off of. The result? A "tribute" that's as polarizing as it is ridiculous. Hearing
"We don't give a ***, y'all pussy like bitches" over something vaguely reminiscent of "Street Spirit" is enough to bring any Radiohead purist to tears, but discovering one's inner Lil' Jon to a "Paranoid Android" remix? Hell, regardless of the shoddy quality,
Skeet Spirit is something that demands to be heard.
There's something so charmingly simple behind
Skeet Spirit, it's not implausible to actually get some legitimate
enjoyment out of this hellish concept, perhaps prompting some indie playa somewhere to grind his indie ho in sheer euphoria. I'll be damned if the song titles aren't worth the price of
Skeet Spirit (which is free, by the way) alone, with classics such as "No Sizzurprises" and "Creepin (On Dat Ass)" providing enough hilarity to forgive each track's questionable execution. DJ Gyngyvytus clearly put legitimate effort into making these songs, with tracks like "Talk Show Hoes" and "The National Headbustaz Anthem" providing absurd amounts of entertainment that thanks to perfect song editing, never gets boring. The former of these two features copious amounts of bass and a hook of "Pop that pussy/ pop-pop that pussy", making it a banger to match punches with contemporaries such as, say, The Ying Yang Twins or Dem Franchize Boyz, with more originality than the two combined. "The National Headbustaz Anthem" also finds the perfect mix between Radiohead and crunk, as the bass riff from
Kid A's "The National Anthem" proves a surprisingly adept crunk hook. Hell, by the time "Snaps Out" comes along, even the most jaded of indie snobs might not be able to resist the urge to snap their fingas.
But first and foremost,
Skeet Spirit should not be taken seriously, which should be a pre-requisite for listening. Those expecting to find something of the sincere quality of the Rainydayz remixes will be disappointed, as DJ Gyngyvytus neither has the beats nor the raps (or any raps, for that matter) to match the quality of his Radiohead-remixing peers. But with each song clocking in at a meager two and a half minutes,
Skeet Spirit never gets the opportunity to grow boring or tedious, and achieves its main purpose: to entertain. Granted,
Skeet Spirit is not the type of record to listen to obsessively and love, but as a record somewhere between a gimmick and a legitimate effort, it stands strong, and deserves the twenty minutes it takes to get through the whole thing. And if hearing the robot from "Fitter, Happier" say
"what? yeah. okay." doesn't make you laugh, then you are surely made of stone.
