The Mash-Up Issue #3: DJ TimeDrop's St. Valentine's Day MassacReMixtape

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. DJ TimeDrop

Welcome backward, Ticketholders!

It's been a decade or more since I last touched a mixing program, but I'm incredibly proud of (most of) the thirty-plus mash-ups and remixes I was able to put together back then, including the beginnings of a Fort Minor & Modest Mouse Mash-Up album and holiday mixes for Christmas and Valentine's Day, the latter of which I'll be sharing with you today because it's the Throwback Thursday before Valentine's Day in the Month Of Love).

I'll be going over the track list, including my inspirations, changes I'd make if I were to modernize things, and anything else that comes to mind as I write. Give it a listen here (apologies for the lack of video on short notice):

First of all, I have no technical music skill, so I don't know about tempo or key or anything like that; I just went with whatever I think felt right together in the moment and did my best with what resources I had. My software of choice was Acoustica Mixcraft 7, and as I got my hands on whatever acapella tracks and instrumentals I could, by whatever means I could, even though I owned physical copies of most of the music I used and didn't intend to gain financially from the content I mixed, I found it challenging to share my mixes on platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud without getting strikes (despite there being numerous successful DJ channels on YouTube to this day).

Here's the track list for my Valentine's Day mix:

1. Biz Markie, Kanye West & Jamie Foxx, Kid Rock, & Metallica: "Sad But Just A Golddigger" - Obviously, I'd remove the two stricken artists in a modern version because they went full guano-brained MAGAt when they realized the President would allow them to say the quiet parts way too loud (except Kid Rock, whose kayfabe went so hard in his prime that most people forgot he had always been rap-rocking about being a patriotic grifter and statutory pimp with an ego problem, long before Bad Reputation and the recent All-American Halftime Show dropped the curtain to wipe up the piece of shit). Anyway, back when the Skratch 'n' Sniff radio show was good and hadn't ditched its star DJ to go full corporate, said DJ Mike Czech did two Metallica mashups for the show (one with "American Badass" and one with "Golddigger"), and I went "let's mash up the mashups, but do even more with it!" So I added the Biz, and yeah, magic.
2. Saliva & Li'l Jon Bon Jovi: "Shots Through the Heart" - I think this is the perfect meeting point of excess and restraint, because I wanted to do more, but realized after awhile that what I have is good enough on its own. Plus I got Bon Jovi to do the "shots, shots,..." thing at the beginning in a time before AI. No further notes needed.
3. Aerosmith & Run DMC, Johnny Cash, Eminem & Nate Dogg, Beastie Boys, & LMFAO: "Shake This Line" - On the other end, this is another Skratch 'n' Sniff inspiration that became a case of "take Mike Czech's Aerosmith/Johnny Cash mashup and throw in as many ass-shaking songs as I can find." I couldn't get some things to line up perfectly, so I'd probably get incredibly nitpicky if I re-did it today, but I like it.
4. Linkin Park & Britney Spears: "Toxic/Faint"
5. Rob Zombie, Jay-Z & Linkin Park: "NUMB/Encore" - These two I'd completely gut and overhaul from the bottom up. My beat-matching is awful and screams "I put these together on a deadline." I'd probably even just pull out the Linkin Park bits altogether and do totally different mashups. I still want the engagement, but self-directed brutal honesty is important sometimes.
6. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Rammstein, & Puddle Of Mudd: "Du Hast Myself For She Hates Me" - I'd change a few things with the Puddle Of Mudd section and the "Du Hast" bit in the middle to make things sound smoother and more on heat, but I'm otherwise happy with it.
7. Like A Storm & Dem Franchize Boyz: "I Think They Like The Way You Hate Me" - I don't blame anyone for not knowing who Dem Franchize Boyz are, but it bugs me (even though he was friends with Diddy and he got himself absolutely destroyed by Eminem) that young millennials and zoomers don't know who Jermaine Dupri is. Anyway, I remember being shocked at how professional-sounding this turned out.
8. Fort Minor, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: "Don't Petrify Me Like That" - this is okay. It needs intensive beat and melody work (or an entirely different backing track) to complete the picture, but I like the idea I had.
9. LMFAO & Drowning Pool: "Girl, Lookit Them Bodies" - This is just fun. It's a simply put-together mash-up and it's dumb and not perfect, but I love that about it. 100% meme potential.
10. NINe-Yo & ZZ Top: "CLOSER Luvin'" - I maybe made this one too long and my audio sources weren't the best, but it came out pretty well, and my lining up of Ne-Yo's vocals with the fade-out melody is a touch I'm particularly proud of.

I hope you enjoyed the results of my amateur efforts and my current (and in some cases, lingering) thoughts on my creative process. Sorry for the delay on this release. I was tired after a stressful workday and a packed content week (that's not over yet) and I ran into some technical issues getting the media aspects of this to share properly. Tomorrow, everything will come Together, though. So please Stay Tuned and remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read to give me some scratch, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and mix in the latest news on my content.

103

DJ TimeDrop,

Out.