Don’t Talk, Just Listen

The mixtape has evolved since its inception in the 1960s from a personal collection of songs recorded onto a tape to a rapper’s freestyle over a familiar beat. While Feed the Animals falls into the mixtape genre, Girl Talk remixes the definition to truly mash-up a variety of songs to create one supersong. Producer Gregg Gillis adopts the pseudonym Girl Talk and is exceptionally talented in combining multiple songs at once without sounding cacophonous. Around the 3-minute mark on “Play Your Part (Pt. 1),” he effortlessly weaves Lil Wayne’s rap from “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy” with the chorus of T.I.’s “What You Know” over the beat of Aaliyah’s “We Need a Resolution.” In similar fashion, “Like This” creatively entwines the chorus from the Mims song of the same name with Diana Ross’ “Upside Down” and Eve’s “Tambourine.”Most current mixtapes tend to stick with one genre, but Girl Talk likes to play with different styles. On “Hands in the Air” alone he samples everyone from the Cardigans to Flo Rida and Genesis to Michael Jackson. With so many songs being mixed, listening to the album becomes a game of Name That Tune, as another sampled song becomes prevalent with every repeated listen. Some sampled songs are barely audible though, such as DJ Khaled’s “Holla at Me” and Missy Elliott’s “Ching-a-Ling,” which are credited but unrecognizable on “No Pause.” The next challenge for Girl Talk would be to create a mash-up of songs that have a theme within his own creation. For example, “In Step” started out appropriately with Drama’s “Left, Right,” but would have seemed more logical had it followed with the directional footwork on portions of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract,” Unk’s “Walk It Out,” and New Kids on the Block’s “Step by Step.” Until that time comes, this album is an enjoyable nonstop listen from the beginning to the end, just how a mixtape should be.