Girl Talk: Feed the Animals

Two years ago, Girl Talk's Night Ripper brought legitimacy to the art of mash-up and created a massive new audience for the genre out of the indie crowd. The excitement of the record was in its juxtaposition of every form of popular music of the last forty years, pushing all the buttons at once and exposing the common thread that ran through it all. Feed the Animals continues along these lines, but with less urgency. While it is slightly less exciting than its predecessor, Feed the Animals more than makes up for it with moments of genuinely sublime beauty. Many of these moments results from pairings of rap/hip-hop tracks with rock: T.I. with Sinéad O'Connor, Pras with Yo La Tengo, among others. In some ways, Feed the Animals is more daring than Night Ripper in its use of samples more likely to invite lawsuits. Hopefully Metallica, Prince and others can appreciate Feed the Animals in the spirit in which it was intended and not be as litigious as they have been in the past.