A Night at the Hip-Hopera

Today I remembered the existance of A Night at the Hip-Hopera by the Kleptones today. They use a bunch of Queen songs (though none actually from A Night at the Opera) and lay hip-hop vocals from various artists like Eminem, KRS-One and the Beastie Boys. My favourite is the one that uses “One Vision” as the base, “See”. John Deacon's bass was always really funky and Queen's instrumental goodness actually shines through really well on these tracks where they managed to take out Freddie's vocals.

I also especially like “Jazz” which uses “All of that Jazz”, the mst under-rated and under-appreciate groovy Brian May masterwork, perfect for rapping over, and they even lay “Rock You” on top of it, Queen vs. Queen mashup, by definition the best thing ever. They also put “Ice Ice Baby” on top of “Under Pressure” with all the instruments left in. Much better.

This is totally giving me sonic handjobs.

They've released it under a Creative Commons licence and some of the lyrics refer to Copyright, so the album is a bit of a statement against the iron grip the music industry is trying to keep over so-called intellectual property.

I've liked some hip-hop music but I don't have a good knowledge of the world of hip-hop and where more interesting non-corporate/mainstream stuff can be readily found. This album is great, though, because it's a good intro to a lot of artists laid on top of music I already know and love deeply. And for a mashup work the production is impeccable. Sounds like a work by the rappers themselves. And they did a great job of grabbing the tracks from the Queen songs and focusing your attention on parts of the songs you sometimes miss.

They also use a bunch of samples from movies and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”.

Go listen.