"Drop Down & Get Your Weezer On:" Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Jr. - PRODUCE (Vol. 1)
Not since Interpol frontman Paul Banks unleashed his semi-awkward Everybody On My D*ck Like They Supposed to Be have I heard a more un-Hip-Hop sounding mixtape; But with that said, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. uploaded their long-rumored PRODUCE (Vol. 1) mixtape mid-Wednesday afternoon. It's an oddly endearing juxtaposition of Weezer-indebted Indie Rock and Underground Hip-Hop with a little help from their friends, Asher Roth, Murs, Chuck Inglish, 112 crooner Slim, King Chip, Quelle Chris, and more. While it's actually a pretty legit-sounding Hip-Hop affair, there are still in fact flavors of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s deeply-ingrained Pop tendencies subtly inter-woven through out PRODUCE: a light-hearted Beach Boys/Biggie mash-up, a cover of Nina Simone covering Randy Newman, and even decades-old interpolated Paul Simon lyrics. The 16-track mixtape is flanked by two album tracks remixed by Absofacto and Jon Zott (Goldenboyz), brother of co-frontman Daniel Zott... "Before Nate Dogg passed away, I was listening to some of his old songs and thinking bout how incredible it is that he was able to sing such absurd lyrics and yet, always sound so cool. I started writing an album for his voice," Josh Epsetein lamented in an interview to accompany Complex's recent premier of "Rush Into Love." "He passed away a month later, and I was instantly filled with regret. Not because I truly believed that we would make that album together, but because I wished I'd [be] able hear more of his voice. That became the inspiration to start the same project on a smaller scale: One song for one of our favorite artists, who's voice we wanted to hear more of," he continued. While I wouldn't exactly recommend it for Hip-Hop purists, PRODUCE is the perfect sun-soaked mixtape to listen to while you're waiting for this frigid weather to break; it's now available for FREE download from either web-mixtape power-house DatPiff or the band's personal Soundcloud page, which is conveniently embedded above.