Girl Talk — Feed The Animals

For those of you who heard Night Ripper, the 2006 release that sent the name Girl Talk radiating through the blogosphere, Feed The Animals is more of the same. While that sounds largely dismissive, it isn't. Night Ripper was a near perfect album full of extraordinarily unique and surprising mash-ups (Biggie over Elton John, anyone?) that instantly catapulted 27-year-old Greg Gillis to the level of dancefloor maverick. Feed The Animals follows the same formula, but the kinks have been smoothed out. There's a graceful flow between tracks, which allows for 300-and-something illicit samples to fly by at breakneck speed without becoming abrasive or confusing. Songs that should have no business together (like Lil Mama's "Lipgloss" and Metallica's "One," or Blackstreet's "No Diggity" and Radiohead's "15 Step") are completely recontextualized, and the whole becomes something much more exciting and visceral than the component parts. Girl Talk's sample selection has also shifted further towards the mainstream, and his mixes now pair top 40 hits with timeless rock anthems (see Soulja Boy's "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" over Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak"). The result is a post-modern pastiche that will surely work as the lighter to fire up some of the summer's hottest dance parties.