God Is Smiling On You, But He’s Frowning Too

My favourite rap song of all time is The Message by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. It came out in 1982 when I was in high school, and I learned all the words by heart. It inspired me to imagine that I was a rapper too, and I joked around with my friends about how we we’re always bugging out (doing something else when you should be rap dancing); because we couldn’t actually rap. Or dance.

I came up with this phrase encapsulating all the rap lingo I knew at the time:

“How you gonna make no ducats to buy some covers for your shellackers when you always buggin’ out?”

Which translates to:

“How are you going to earn any money to buy some shoes for your feet if you’re always doing something else when you should be rap dancing?”

We were kidding ourselves of course, and I went on to pursue a career in Computer Engineering.

Nevertheless, I still loved the song. The final verse in particular spoke to me, and I love the passion and energy with which Mr Flash delivered it. It’s a blast from the past that still resonates with me today. Two of my favourite lines from it are:

God is smiling on you, but he’s frowning too
Because only God know what you’ll go through

So, for this assignment my artistic vision is:

Remix the vocals from the final chorus of The Message by Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five in a completely new, surreal, bizarre and outrageously unexpected way.

Here’s a diagram of my intuitive bespoke workflow:

When I apply this workflow to this assignment, the resulting procedural steps looks something like:

In iZotope RX 8:

• Extract the vocals using Music Rebalance

In Logic Pro X:

• Cut the dialogue up into bite-sized chunks
• Use Live Loops to animate the samples in real time
• Use the Step Sequencer to automatically trigger other samples
• Use Alchemy’s granular synthesis features to add a completely new texture
• Use UltraBeat to add Roland TR-808 drum machine-like sounds to recreate the 1980’s feel, but with a new rhythm
• Use a bunch of production techniques I learned last semester in MUSC2653 Introduction to Digital Music Techniques and on Disclosure’s Twitch Music Production Tutorials
• Apply a shit-ton of funky effects like Stereo Echo, Reverb, Compression, etc.
• Whatever other weird shit comes to me down at the beach or in my sleep

In General:

• Make Mum & Dad proud

I’ve never used RX 8, Live Loops, the Step Sequencer, Alchemy or Ultrabeat before, so this is going to get interesting. I really don’t know how this is going to go, but that’s the point of taking creative risks, so here goes…