Ever since your gran started calling everything a 'mash-up', the sub-genre of funky breaks combos has swelled like a goose in a grain store. Driven by the likes of A.Skillz and Featurecast, labels like Bombstrikes and the ever growing Ghetto Funk crew, the number of tunes being cut and shunted on a daily basis has been reaching all-you-can-eat levels of abundancy.
If you don't know what I'm talking about (where have you been since 2004?), making a funky breaks mash-up involves taking a familiar vocal / bassline / riff / chorus / sample, blending it with at least one other familiar vocal / bassline / riff / chorus / sample and pouring it over some funky mid-tempo beats, with plenty of bouncing elastic bass thrown for good measure.
Having almost completely exhausted James Brown samples lately, DJ's searching for something different have been using more and more classic hip hop, reggae, funk and music like wot I grew up with. Breaks has always been good at resampling classic tunes and assimilating different styles of music, so this just seems to be a further blurring of the lines to the point that even the individual productions can no longer be identified in the melting pot.
What does this all mean? Have breaks DJs now given up writing original tunes? Does your nan know more than she's letting on? I have no idea, but it all sounds good and it's damn fun to dance to. Here's a few of the tastiest mixtapes I've been enjoying this month:
Slynk - 2011 Hour Of Funk by Slynk
Pimpsoul Promo mix 2011 by Pimpsoul
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