ReMix:PaRappa the Rapper "A Lesson from Teacher" 3:52

FIRST OFF: Love that mix title! In 2010 we saw an awesome homage to PaRappa from Navi (formerly Mythril Nazgul) that I still queue up on playlists regularly, and now Anti-Syne gives us a completely different take on the iconic, rhythm-game-before-rhythm-games-were-cool rappin' protagonist of yore; Jack writes:

"First thing I should make clear this is a non-rap arrangement of a rap song... As seems to be my way, this is an Electronica take on PaRappa's first stage, and my personal favourite from the game. It turns out there's not a great deal of source to actually use when you strip away the vocals from the original, so the majority of the lyrics (well there aren't that many) have stayed to keep it familiar, but vocoded and distorted to hide my actual voice. I've used the original bassline, but shifted it up a few octaves to make it the melody line instead, then added my own chord sequence, then it's just layer upon layer of synths (and one guitar) and there you have it!"

So if a modern-day Kraftwerk teamed up with a Speak & Spell and decided to do an electronica take on PaRappa's first stage, this wouldn't be too far off. A lot of the speech sounds synthesized to me; the voice on the left sounds like the same text-to-speech voice used to introduce each new episode of Serial Experiments Lain, in particular, whereas the voice closer to the center/right I'm guessing is Jack's vocoded contribution. It's not easy to take a source like this and turn it into anything other than a hip-hop track - I've actually listened to it a few times with the intention of doing so myself, but nothing ever hit me in terms of an approach. This jubilee of robo-voice dance definitely works, and it ALMOST comes off like a mash-up between PaRappa and the infamous MOOORTTAAALLL KOMMMBBAAATT theme, only Sub-Zero has become KICK, Liu Kang has become PUNCH, etc. It's all in the mind, you see. At any rate, it's a cheesy-but-excellent arrangement that reimagines PaRappa in a whole new light - something I wish Sony would do, themselves. Maybe Jack's track will inspire them, who knows, but until then I feel like this was a mix that needed to happen, in this style, and I couldn't have done it better myself, to be sure. Props to Mr. Syne, whose lesson is a catchy, educational, updated stroll down memory lane.