Adina Howard vs. Ride >> Ridin' dirty

(_Y_) Adina Howard vs. Ride - "FreakRide" (_Y_)

∑ (EastWest, 1994 vs. Creation / Sire, 1992; made by Go Home Productions, 2003) ∑

Yes, it's the most libidinous R&B guilty pleasure of its era (aside from maybe "Froggy Style" by Nuttin' Nyce), Adina Howards's "Freak Like Me", in a duel against a dubby, bass-heavy, Byrds-esque shoegaze classic, Ride's "Leave Them All Behind"...  It briefly created a new genre, Rhythm N' Shoes, but since no one in England knew how to dress to it, it fizzled out within a few hours.

I'd have to say this is my favorite "mashup" song ever, though I'm not exactly an expert on the whole scene.  I downloaded this somewhere during the mashup craze of mid 2003 to early 2004.  Once I had collected 5 or 6 mashups of OutKast's "Hey Ya!," I realized that the trend was quickly playing itself out, especially when people unimaginatively began mashing "Hey Ya!" with Usher's "Yeah!" and/or with Howard Dean's infamous "Yeah!" speech.  But I have to admit I wish it was still going on, because every once in a while you found a great one and had to pass it on to all your e-friends.  This one is by Go Home Productions, which was apparently one of the leading provocateurs of the mashup genre.  (The pic above is the original image created by GHP to go with the file.)  It was released in April 2003, according to his website.  After hearing this song, I actually felt one of those "Aha" moments, knowing that this mashup would probably never be topped, and that I could thus turn my attentions to other matters.  So it was kind of like a pièce de résistance moment, where I realized the highest mountain had been scaled and the only way to go from there was downhill.  I'll always wonder if Adina or members of Ride ever heard this song.  I like how Ride's backing vocals come in subtly near the end.  Well done, GHP.  We hardly knew ye...  We can't forgive ye for spawning charlatans like Girl Talk, though.

On the Go Home Productions site, Mark Vidler (a.k.a. GHP) says about this song: "Shoegazers. Don't get me started, I was there. I was part of it. Always knew this track would work. One of those where you don't have to re-pitch the vocal and there's enough meat in the backing track to make it punch. Created as a new track to play out at Bastard that month and was going to be part of the Remix Superchunk but some last minute tracks relegated it. April 2003."  My only gripe is that he missed the obvious correlation between the word "Behind" in the Ride song and the asset that Ms. Howard was so fond of showing off.  After she sings "Got a little freakiness inside," I would've plugged in Ride singing "Leave them all behind," or at least substituted "behind" for "inside" in her sentence.  Anyway, since this song doesn't appear to be available anywhere online, I will go ahead and call it a Blowtorch Baby exclusive.

Fun Game Time: Guess which song is naughtier based solely on its CD single's cover art!

a.) 

or

b.) ?

As you can imagine, this was definitely the easiest "clever post title" I've ever had to come up with. 

Planets with similar climates: N/A, but The Afghan Whigs' cover of Toni Braxton's "You're Makin' Me High" (1997) is close enough.

Currently feeling: A bit old, considering that Shaquille O'Neal retired today after 19 years in the NBA, and I got his autograph at LSU basketball camp in 1990, when he still had two years left to play at LSU.  I still have the issue of Sports Illustrated with him on the cover when he was at LSU.  People forget how skinny and athletic he used to be, before he piled on huge amounts of weight and became an uncoordinated refrigerator on the court, hurling up free throws as though they were anvils and bricking any shot outside of 5 feet.