mya ft chingy - fallen (zone 4 rmx)

winmx, the most rap-friendly of file-sharing appz, suggests the og version of "fallen" is surprisingly popular! surprising because not in my wildest dreams would i think anyone wanted to hear the mysterious and talented mya singing over an especially annoying pharcyde song. whose fucking bright idea was that!? maybe mya is in the kanye-led cabal currently hustling the takeover of rap and r'n'b, who are all like 'well actually "93 til infinity" was just as good as "nuthin but a g thang"'. yes yes, dudes-of-a-certain-age, revolutionary ('but gangsta') thinking! 'each tribe album has reflected a different period in my life,' they seem to be saying. just kill me! it has to be all about maturity, like rejecting the essential immaturity of the undie/mersh divide and saying, blah blah what's good is good, i'm just tryna be real! "the first nigga with a benz and a backpack" ('look, i can still make funnies while being mature!')

i can feel that even if it's a totally boring sentiment. and i can't really fuck with this cabal because it has probably allowed people like the heatmakers to buy nice houses and stuff (and make a ton of amazing beats!) just cuz they use samples! cool! oh yeah, kanye is still great too, except for that dreary-ass "all falls down" song (somehow even more annoying since he re-recorded the lauryn hill sample).

the remix of "fallen" is vaguely in line with the cabal - it has familiar samples and it could almost have been a freestyle fellowship beat - but it has that cool over the topness that you can often only find on soundtrack albums (this is on barbershop 2, go out and buy it!). afrika drums, whining synths, dramatic stop-starting, hand-claps, that sound from "south bronx", it's all here! mya sounds good as always but chingy is the kick: his voice is so associated with digital sheen that when his verse explodes it's like... wo. when did anybody else bother to be so energetic? probably not since souls of mischief, huh!