Fight the Power.

JFine is tougher than nigerian hair.

Final Assignment: a song. not just any song, House-Hip/Trip-Hop epic remixing two pillars of 21st century culture: Lil' Wayne's 2006 Pop Bottles with Birdman and A Milli off Tha Carter 3. Basically like mixing Bach with Stravinsky.

Note: there were no samples used save the vocals and one baseline (the one that gets distorted 45 sec or so in.)

Overall Structure:
Initially, the track starts out with a house-y beat. To cite my sources Music 295 style, I used Discotech's Remix of Homecoming (see two posts ago) as inspiration. The main challenge for the first house part was getting a hip-hop sample to increase raveability. Pop Bottles runs at 100bpm, which is too slow for a 4 to the floor dance track, so I had to mess with the samples to get them to fit in at 120bpm.
Next, I wanted to work in the first full verse from A Milli. This would entail dropping the bpm down to 76 (so that it would match up with the acapella) and moving from a House to Hip Hop beat. I struggled with this transition the most: I already had a high energy level, and couldn't just shave off 50 bpm and throw away my 4 to the floor for syncopation in just one bar. So I ended up dropping out the drums for four bars, keeping one of the instruments through the transition, and adding a hint of trip hop with the echoed phrase and twinkly arpeggiator. But, ten seconds later the (sick as hell) drums drop and weezy f starts on his verse at 76 bpm.
The last transition would be moving back from hip-hop (a milli) to house (pop bottles). I gradually shifted the tempo while making a smooth transition between the lyrics of the two songs ("you can't man em then you...pour it on the models"). Midi-ing the samples proved to be absurdly difficult, because I couldn't program them in slower than the actual bpm (it would come out overlapping and awkward.)
I found a thunder roll sample to end with. I thought it fitting as it clearly reflects the impact this remix will have on 'the game.'

Issues encountered:
different BPMs. A Milli is at 76 bpm, and Pop Bottles runs at 100. Had to mix it so it didn't sound out of sync.
Lil Wayne's flow being too sick for its own good on A Milli. He weaves in and out of his beats so much that it makes it hard to construct a beat around his acapella (see 1:37 in Pop A Milli)
weak samplers. I never want to see the letters NNXT in a row again. Ended up with having to deal with 7 at one time. You had to go back into ReCycle every time...Al Gore would have been proud.
Making Bass sound legit. More difficult than you would imagine. It's mixed for speakers that can really crank bass, so the drums sound somewhat distorted on ipod headphones or weak computer speakers.
Volume control. Unruly to keep a somewhat consistent dB throughout the song. The HyperEditor was a godsend.
Having too much fun with effects. I stumbled around for an hour before I got the swirling delay-y effect when Lil Wayne first raps "a millionare, i'm a young money millionare..." a minute in.
Arpeggiators in Reason are Busted. Hurt my ears way too many times and didn't shut off when I paused the track in logic. Also I had to make different tracks for different Arpeggiator sections; I couldn't change on the fly.
Mixing lyrics together...cleverly.

25 hours for 3 minutes and six seconds of illery. Enjoy.