“I’m a Flirt (Shoreline) (R. Kelly f/ T-Pain and T.I. vs. Broken Social Scene)” - The Hood Internet
(Arranged by Aaron Brink and Steve Reidell, available on Mixtape Volume 1, Self-Released 2007)

If music is a rich tapestry, then songwriters are the weavers.  They transform raw materials into works of wonder.  Whether it’s cotton or musical notes, weavers pull together the basic material while working in a basic part of themselves.  This is how a hundred different items come from the same crop, or a hundred different songs come from the same fragment of melody.  We admire their skills and marvel at their ability to inject a part of their soul into their art, and while we can study their techniques, it won’t look right unless we find our way to makes our voices resonate through these threads.  Without the artist, whether it’s fabric or music, the end product never comes to life.

If music is a tapestry and songwriters are weavers, then DJs are quilters.  It’s the DJ’s responsibility to take fragments of other people’s work and create a cohesive blanket.  We all like to think we can DJ, but it requires so many factors to be successful to make a quilt that’s pleasing to the senses.  I’m not a huge fan of mashups largely because DJs flood the internet with poor final products.  It’s easy to find the ugly quilts culled together from the spare parts lying around, and these mashups rarely feel like a warming blanket.  The Hood Internet, a Chicago based duo that specializes in the collision between hip hop and slightly left of center indie rock, may not make transcendent quilts every time out, but they have a strong track record of success.  My personal favorite marries together R. Kelly’s “I’m a Flirt” with Broken Social Scene’s “7/4 (Shoreline),” and when I try to describe it to someone who hasn’t heard this mashup, I tend to make it sound ridiculous.  Then, I play it and it somehow works. 

I look at “I’m a Flirt (Shoreline)” in two different ways.  First, knowing the source material (admittedly, I know the Broken Social Scene track better than the R. Kelly track), I admire their handiwork stitching together this unlikely pairing.  They manage to turn Broken Social Scene’s 7/4 groove into a standard 4/4 beat, making the vocals sound natural with their unwitting Canadian accompaniment.  Amazingly, the vocals blend in with the song too (especially T. Pain’s melodic verse, which must be pitch shifted).  It’s a complement to the DJs for knowing how to pick the right scraps to stitch together, drawing on different parts of the song to accompany the different vocalists.  In addition to admiring the individual selections, the whole quilt works together as a cohesive whole rather than solely as patchwork.  Not only do the DJs marry the right part of each together, but they also know how to hide their stitches out of view.  Like a tailor putting the stitches on the inside of folds, the Hood Internet turn the songs inside out and thread them together in their audio editor before turning it back around again.  Yes, the proof of the work exists, but it’s out of view.  We only see the final product – a work of juxtaposition that seems natural rather than forced.

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