BOOTIE Top 10 - April 2007

Most of this month's Top 10 are fairly recent releases, but there are a few here that have been out for a while. We download so many mashups each week, that it sometimes takes us a month or two to catch up on everything. Anyway, here goes, presented in alphabetical order by bootlegger.

To download, right click on the song title...

A plus D – (I Can't Wait For) Kelly's Nu Shooz (Kelly vs. Nu Shooz vs. KC & the Sunshine Band) – San Francisco
Definitely one with underground cult appeal. Kelly is a teenage girl character created by Los Angeles-based comedian Liam Sullivan, and her video "Shoes" has become a bona fide YouTube sensation. The song is so simple and the instrumentation so sparse that it was just begging to be mashed up ... and why not with '80s one hit wonder Nu Shooz? Throwing in KC's "Boogie Shoes" at the end for some disco shits and giggles just stretches the "shoes" concept even further.

dj BC – 2 Live Supertramp Disco (2 Live Crew vs. Supertramp vs. Marvin Gaye) – Boston
Is Supertramp having a resurgence as of late? Is it suddenly ironically cool to profess your secret love for this awesome band? We don't care if it's cool or not -- we just love the song, and this mashup from Boston's dj BC is a perfect example of the sort of extreme genre clash that made us fall in love with the mashup scene to begin with. 2 Live Crew never sounded better! And it still sounds like a party!

Lasso The Moon – Saturday Night Fool At The Soul Kitchen (Bay City Rollers vs. The Doors vs. The Who) – St. Louis
We love bootleggers who come out of nowhere to blow us away with something as creative and well-produced as this. It breathes new life into three bands that peaked over 25 years ago.

DJ Lobsterdust – She Is Glamorous (Fergie vs. The Fray) – New York City
How the hell do you make Fergie sound like she's got indie street-cred? You force her to sing with The Fray, who somehow elevate the vapid, plastic pop of "Glamorous" and manage to make it sound like something that might actually be laced with lyrical metaphor. Of course, it's just an audio illusion – but for four glorious minutes, at least we can pretend.

Lock3down – Lord Move Me On Up (DMX vs. Primal Scream) – Toronto, Canada
Neither one of us is especially religious, but there's just something about hearing a tough thug like DMX rap about Jesus while Primal Scream works out their old-time gospel jones that had us hailing "hallelujah!" Of course, we love mashups that can reveal a conceptual parallel between two seemingly disparate artists, and on this one, Lock3down delivers. See, everyone loves God!

Norwegian Recycling – How Six Songs Collide (Jason Mraz vs. Howie Day vs. Five For Fighting vs. Angela Ammons vs. Boyzone vs. 3 Doors Down) – Norway
We're not exactly big fans of this sort of "white-bread-Starbucks-sipping-SUV-driving-yuppie" music. To us, it all kinda sounds the same -- and this mashup proves it! However, it's so amazingly seamless and well-produced and just so ... NICE! We couldn't help but like it and include it here.

Sweetcheesus - Jumpictures (Madonna vs. Sneaky Sound System vs. Human League) – Australia
While technically a mashup, this will sound more like a remix to most people -- however, this runs circles around any of the officially-released remixes from Madonna's latest album. If only she had hired Sneaky Sound System to do her remixes -- they could have sounded as fresh as this.

DJ Topcat - More Than On Point (House of Pain vs. Boston) – Seattle
Sure, it's a simple rap vs. classic rock A+B, with the requisite hip-hop beats added for dance-floor oomph. But damn, we just love this track! First off, who doesn't love that Boston song? And it uses a rap vocal we haven't ever heard used in a mashup yet. Just a fun jam that feels like a call to arms ... to party!

Wax Audio – Maiden Goes To Bollywood (Iron Maiden vs. Sunidhi Chauhan) – Sydney, Australia
Talk about a genre clash! There's no good reason why this should work -- heavy metal meets Bollywood? In less talented hands, this would have turned into a train wreck. But Aussie bootlegger Wax Audio knows what he's doing, and makes this rock in the most unexpected way. This just might be our favorite mashup on this month's list. Our favorite part comes one minute in: "Maaaaaaiiiiden!!!!"

DJ Zax - My Humps (A+D edit) (Alanis Morissette vs. Black-Eyed Peas) – San Francisco BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE!
We're big fans of the mashup subgenre we call "celebrity karaoke," where one takes a cover song done by a popular artist and mashes it up over the original. It's a bit of a "cheat," but we're hardly purists -- it's mashed up enough in our book. So when Alanis Morissette's somber, piano-and-voice version of "My Humps" became a big, tongue-in-cheek hit on YouTube, we wanted to hear what it would sound like mashed up with the original Black-Eyed Peas. We began working on it ... but DJ Zax beat us to it! We added a few backing vocals from the original, and are happy to present it as a "Bootie exclusive."