Thuggy Stardust and the Hustlers from Mars: Bowie/gangsta rap mashup

The Rise and Fall of Thuggy Stardust and the Hustlers from Mars is MAN-CAT's mashup album in which all the tracks from David Bowie's classic Ziggy Stardust album are mixed with a wide-ranging variety of gangsta rap. None of these tracks floored me, but they all raised a smile and some of them were positively bumptious. Link (Thanks, Opitz!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Cpt. Tim

i know BBB, i was listening to some pope rap the other day and it was all vestments this, and transubstantiation that.
wafflehead

What good culture will Gangsta Rap screw up next?
mhectic

Wow. While this mashup is interesting, I was expecting some good songs like The Ottomen’s Colors.
jjasper

What do you mean, good culture? For that matter, how have they screwed it up? Who really cares?
License Farm

BBB (quite the honorary title you’ve bestowed upon yourself), your summary of the entirety of rap betrays a paltry familiarity with it; it’s akin to the shorthand that all country is about “mah wife dun left me an’ my dawg dun died in the trailer home”. And whenever anyone prefaces a remark with “not to be racist,” it’s a pretty sure bet that what follows is going to be exactly that. Scads of white people managed to disgrace themselves just fine before the assimilation of urban culture into the mainstream.

A very good friend who is black told me just this week that the debate over the use of the word “nigger” (or, as the distinction seems to be relevant to the discussion, “nigga”) is absolutely meaningless, and is mostly a public relations tactic, less for the black community so much as for the white community. It makes us uncomfortable when marginalized groups take ownership over those pigeonholes which formerly were seen to own them. But that’s only if we accept the guilt for those institutions. As someone whose family has been in this country for only about a century, and whose largest affiliation was minimally involved in most of these oppressive institutions and in fact was more involved in said institutions dismantlement, I do not feel any such guilt. I do not take an interest in the culture and rights of other peoples out of “white guilt”; I do so because to know and support difference is to also better know and encourage commonality.
Halloween Jack

And in other news, the original album featured the lyric, “A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer
threw up at the sight of that”. How offensive! I may listen to it at less than maximum volume in the future. Moving right along.
kate

boingboing covers this but there was nary a mention about Niggy Tardust? Come on, BB.
Cowicide

> #8 posted by crazymonk -you can grab the 160 kbps mp3s for
> free, or pay $5 and get 192, 320, or FLAC, your choice.

It’s actually 192Kbps for free, not 160…. apparently.
jjasper

Didn’t we have The Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust already? I’m not much of a hip hop or rap fan, so I’m not the one to appreciate either of them. But what’s next? The return of Vanilla Ice?
License Farm

BBB: Or maybe I am mad because the last refuge of whiteness- my Ziggy Stardust LP- has been stolen by thug-a-bees?

“The last refuge of whiteness”? Are you serious with this shit? That’d be pretty sad if so. Because, as we all know, white people don’t make good music anymore. You do know David Bowie is married to an African supermodel, don’t you?

Also, I’m betting that if you go look for it, your Ziggy Stardust LP is right where you left it. No thugs broke into your home and stole it. It will sound the same as it has for 30+ years.

And I wonder, have you considered the possibility that DJ Man-Cat is anything other than black? Hell, Man-Cat might not even be a man (or a cat, for that matter). No, of course not: I forgot, only black men are DJs. Would it still be a crime against caucasians if it’s perpetrated by the melanin-deprived?

No, I believe you’re just discomfitted by the cross-pollination and genre-blurring that started long before Bowie, was evident in his works and those of his peers, but has really bloomed in the last generation. By the examples you give of what you consider “good” black music, both of which are indeed great though hardly contemporary, you seem to prefer that “they” stay on their side of the tracks. They will make black people music, we will make white people music, and everyone will know exactly who they are primarily by their ethnic identity. A metal band like Sevendust being fronted by a black man or the burgeoning field of white rappers are simply people trying to be something they’re not, right? And yet, there they are. Enigmatic, no?

Boy, if you get this prissy over this album, I hate to see the fit you’d throw if you ever found out about “Q-Unit” or The Kleptones’ “A Night At The Hip-Hopera”. Way to be on top of that whole music production field; you’re a credit to your profession.

Cpt. Tim: is it just me or does it always sound pathetic when white people name drop black people in an effort to sound not racist, whether they are or not?

Believe it or not, I did consider that before noting that my friend is black, but it’s contextually relevant; his comments would probably be viewed in a much different light had I left his race vague. He has some great insight into racial politics, if somewhat cynical: on New Years Eve I hoped aloud we’d have a black man in the White House by this time next year, to which he replied, “Yeah, he’ll be the janitor.”
rstevens

Oh, mash ups! You’re the only pop music I can digest.
wormwood37

I’m with Amayain. I enjoy a good mashup, and most of the songs involved, but that “album” was a tragedy. Negative points, BoingBoing.
Amayain

Ok-
I LOVE David Bowie.
I LOVE most of the hiphop artists sampled.

That being said, this was PAINFUL to listen to.

/caps ftw, amirite?
Dave X

This isn’t one of the better mashups you’ve posted… Truthfully, I’m really starting to dislike mashups anyway, though. They’re far too often a formulaic junk listen that relies far too heavily on our sense of familiarity and “gee-whiz” factor.
josh42042

Dawn MORTIS, that was spooky!
mscot

#4 welcome home. what took you so long? real, credible music has missed you so.

mashups are ruining clubland. why people want to go to a club and hear the same songs that they can hear on the radio day in and day out is beyond me. and just b/c it’s generic song a played on top of generic song b doesn’t mean its fresh (or anything near creative).
I miss the days when people sought out music that was new and interesting.
Rick.

JJasper: Niggy Tardust by Saul Williams? It’s not a mash-up record.

I haven’t listened to this yet, but I haven’t given up on mash-ups either. Most are horrible and usually badly mixed and horribly timed. But every once in a while, a gem will come through that makes me spend the day looking for more.
mortis

"28 Miles Later" is one of my favorite rap mashups, but being a huge zombie nerd might be the reason.
crazymonk

Saul Williams’s Niggy Tardust isn’t a mash-up, but the music and words are very high quality, and produced by Trent Reznor. They’re offering it for download with a model that’s even better than the recent Radiohead In Rainbows model:

http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/menu

Namely, you can grab the 160 kbps mp3s for free, or pay $5 and get 192, 320, or FLAC, your choice.
boingboingboy

LF, have I accepted guilt for the terms applied to one race because I was born to another race? Or could it possibly be that, as a rather decent human being (and that of course is another honorary title I bestow upon myself), I prefer not to waller in the slop that is spilt before me at every turn?

Or maybe I am mad because the last refuge of whiteness- my Ziggy Stardust LP- has been stolen by thug-a-bees?

Hard to tell. But in 23 years of being a music producer, I haven’t seen this kind of aural wasteland since the Aussie invasion. Give me a heroin addicted jazz trumpeter any day. Give me James Brown and his Jungle Groove. Anything but another mashup like this.
Cpt. Tim

the k west sign on that cover always stuck out to me. when kanye west came out on the scene the ziggy stardust cover was the first thing i thought of.
boingboingboy

Are we done with nggr this and mthrfckr that? Just the sample song is obnoxious enough- “whats my mofo name? Um, you suck? Not to be racist, there are plenty of whiteys mimicing this asinine behavior too. Darwinisn in reverse- Survival of the Lowest Common Denominator
Cpt. Tim

is it just me or does it always sound pathetic when white people name drop black people in an effort to sound not racist, whether they are or not?

anyways i’m not racist cause some of my best friends are black. by the way, did you see that new denzel washington movie? Amazing actor.