I don’t know much about the dude named Donnis…the video for his song “Gone” opens with the Fool’s Gold logo, a nice little label which currently boasts The Suzan. Wikipedia tells me he used to be in the Air Force and was stationed in Tokyo, which you think would be a nice little hook for a blog writing about Japanese music. Yet “Gone” sounds pretty lame to these ears, complete with a family-friendly Gucci Mane-ish beat and some really lame rhymes (the Family Matters bit at the start is a big whiff). In any other world, I would never have listened to this stupid song that kinda encapsulates a lotta problems with rap today! Sorry for the #olddudetalkingaboutrap bit.
How De De Mouse ended up remixing this confuses me, maybe he met Donnis during his Air Force stint and was like “I’ll do this dude a solid one day and remix his weak single for him into a bit of woozy RPG-worthy stuff that gets the attention away from his lyrics.” Welp, here it is! De De’s beat slays the original, not just because it doesn’t sound like a Zone 6 toss-away, but rather because it actually kinda sounds appropriate for a song about being wasted/blunted out of one’s mind at a club. It’s all blurry synths dazzling over chopped up vocals, Donnis’ once lame words transformed into Maui Wowie-addled slurs meshing up just right with the lit-up beat. Whereas the original finds Donnis trying to puff out his chest, De De Mouse’s colorful mix just finds him fucked up out of his mind, tripping over his own tongue and sounding surprisingly captivating as a result. Listen below.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/18491009″]