(Fearless Records)

File under ‘E’ for ‘emetic’

Some (perhaps unnecessary) background info: last week, I contracted food poisoning from some dodgy bakery goods. As such, I am now intimately familiar with the mechanics of purging – or, at least, I thought I was before listening to Punk Goes Crunk, the seventh title in the Punk Goes … series. The concept is so deviously simple and (in retrospect) obvious that I’m tempted to say it could only have come from the devil’s own mind: to take a handful of ‘punk’ (read: commercially-palatable hardcore/emo) bands and get them to cover gangsta rap classics. Don’t imagine for a second, though, that these are raucous, cynical reinventions that fuck with gangsta’s all-too-serious bad-boy imagery; rather, as My American Heart’s nearly note-for-note version of California Love demonstrates, these bands take their task only too seriously, and treat their assigned songs as objects of almost-religious reverence. This, of course, doesn’t prevent them from fouling these songs up further: I couldn’t have imagined pining for Rihanna’s original version of Umbrella, but I guess that fate and All Time Low had other plans for me. By the time Hot Rod Circuit’s Gin & Juice and Lorene Drive’s Hey Ya! come around to completely gut two bona fide rap classics, you will, like me, be running for the toilet bowl. In short: purchase only if in desperate need of an emetic (and even then only if your pharmacist has run out of ipecac syrup).

½ a star

CHAD PARKHILL

Be first to comment on this article

Write Comment
Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged.
Name:
Comment:
Code:*