ReMix:Super Smash Bros. Brawl "Tengen Toppa Dairantou: Part 2 - Sudden Death" 5:33

MUCH better than part 1. The production in part 2 is a lot more balanced, complimentary, and everything just makes more sense to me. The vocalized intro was great, and the lyrics actually sound like they’re trying to compliment the melody. I would personally skip part 1 and go straight to part 2.

So part 2 is much like part 1 in that the rapping was tight and the arrangement was smart and fun as hell, but as a matter of preference because of the characters/rappers in this part, I just wasn't feeling this part as much as the other two, but again, that's just me liking the other 18 minutes of the whole product better, so it's not a negative thing at all.

It seems redundant to comment on this.. maybe that's why nobody is reviewing it... my comments definitely apply to the entire suite HOWEVER these three mixes are fantastic, amazing, and a big reason why I love Sir Jordanius and all of the contributors to OverClocked Assembled. After Part 1, Part 2 built up a bit more before the massive payoff of Part 3. For the people who would say "I wish it was longer", this 3-part thing satisfies.

Tengen Toppa Dairantou artists comments (continued)

*J.ME the Sista' Danius: Ha ha ha haaa, yeah.

To make a very long story short, when I told the entire team (at the time) that I was planning on making two more versions (in addition to Part 1, which was formerly the only version), we ALL agreed that we didn't want this to just be a sausage-fest. I kept thinking over and over again about how Sheik (Zelda) would naturally lend herself so perfectly to the style of Nicki Minaj, but I didn't know who to approach as female vocalists are essentially an endangered species within OCR (and that's not even taking to account female *hip hop* vocalists).

Well, my former job had me working the graveyard shift and my sister is currently a full-time theatre major, so even though I've known my sister's vocal capabilities all of my life (and we live under the same roof), I just kept using our erratic schedules as an excuse for why it would never work. Finally, I just scribbled down some rough lyrics one Sunday afternoon and said "Hey, Jaymie... you know that Smash Bros. game we used to always play? ... Yeah... you think you could, like... rap this? In the style of Nicki Minaj?"

We had an absolute blast.

I've kind of kept my sister as a secret from OCR because 1) our schedules aren't always easy to align and 2) I kind of didn't want her to steal my thunder . Plus, I honestly don't think it sounds anything like "Nicki Minaj," but it's entertaining enough to still convey the general idea. And it's now mandatory that I collab with my sister another time when possible, because we had so much fun while recording our vocals.

*MC Final Sigma: I've actually been "secretly" collaborating with Brian with various hip hop remixes for about a year now (so be on the lookout for some MCFS x W!SE goodness around the corner), therefore his lyrical prowess and tongue-twisting rhymes are no surprise to me. His Jay-Z Cpt. Falcon flow is undeniably classy, sophisticated, and nonchalant as fuuuuuuck. Also, with various collabs, DiGi and MCFS have a tendency to give me several extra ad-libs of them "goofing off," but it is never a joking matter to me since they often spit out what I personally believe to be fantastic ad-libs. Therefore, a lot of his extra phrases found their way into each of the different versions.

As for his "Big L" verse, all I can say is that I'm not as attuned to Big L as I am with other rappers of that time period, but MCFS's rhythmic delivery is buoyant and leisurely while at the same time being enunciated in such a rapid-fire way that I usually did a little dance in my chair every time I'd hear his "and did the monster mash" line. So since I've already heard a lot of what this guy has to offer, it was great to have him finally join up with OverClocked Assembled and showcase a few of his tricks. Keep your eyes on this guy, there's plenty more where that came from.

*LadyJ: So, after I gave the Sheik/Nicki Minaj idea to my sister, I still felt like we could represent the female SSmash characters even more, but I was drawing blanks as to what could possibly be done with the other female SSmash characters. I was overjoyed when Cam3 and LadyJ confirmed that they were interested and excited about helping out, but when LadyJ told me she would be doing Samus in the style of Missy Elliott, I scratched my head a little bit wondering how that would work exactly.

However, just like Aura's DMX Snake verse, I didn't see this one coming and after it hit me I just kept shaking my head in amazement (especially when I examined that reversed line). As with Cam3, DiGi and I talked for a while about LadyJ's stuff and we knew she would be bringing aggressive lines to the table, yet there are so many cunning bits of figurative language and shrill allusions within her verse that I'm still finding new tidbits of awe with every re-listening. And when I first heard her "call me your wife again" line I knew that the rest of her bars were just going to be sickness after sickness.

If my sister's Nicki Minaj Sheik verse brought the cocky female confidence to the table, then LadyJ's treatment of Samus most definitely brought the more seasoned, gloves-off, ruthless textbook lecture approach to the table.

Listeners will definitely need to replay her verse a few more times to fully appreciate it.

*metaphist: No comment necessary... really.

I mean, where do I even begin with this guy?

He's usually very punctual and precise, and he obviously knows his shit like it's nothing. I'm still always looking for ways to share his Angry Sons album with new people whenever appropriately possible, but it seems like every new thing I hear from this guy continues to consistently up the ante. We were all admittedly goofing off and mostly just exchanging witty and comical ideas when we first started working on this, but when Paul dropped his Olimar verse and we heard it for the first time, there was clearly a resounding "...oh... shit."

At one point during this collab, somebody proposed the thought of having a Hip Hop-themed rap battle compo on OCR someday. If that idea was to ever take off, metaphist is the reason why I wouldn't get within 50 light years of my microphone. Some rappers are alright, and some can even kill it, but metaphist is one of those emcees that has the tendency to casually drop lyrical bombs and walk away like it's business as usual.

*SuperiorX: Ever since waaaaay back in the SZRC, I've been constantly telling him about how much I love his "WEEEEOOOOOOHHH" dive bomb synth glides. At first, when I was just going to make one version (P1), I didn't want to bring in other instrumentalists or arrangers, but when I finally revealed to everybody that I had a lot more up my sleeves (and Shariq gave me the green light to make two more versions), I told my Matt upfront that I'd like to have him bring that synth goodness for a "trading fours" type dueling instrumental jam session. My presentation of the idea didn't make a lot of sense at first and it sounded chaotic (mostly because I probably over-complicated my explanation via walls of text), but after I gave him and XPRTJoe a demo of what I was thinking, Matt soon understood where I was coming from and he fully delivered.

I just had to point out a few suggestions with his first few solo WIPs due to a few notes clashing with the chords I was using, but soon everything was chiseled out perfectly and Matt gave me an absolutely seeexy batch of synth goodness. In addition to the synth solo, Matt also suggested a few ideas that found its way into the final draft such as playing the Super Mario Bros. theme before 1-UP's verse in Part 1.

Matt is a great person and it's always fun to work with him, but due to some of the comments in "Time Traveller's Delight" saying that his piano solo was a little reserved, I wanted to make sure that, this time around, Matt had plenty of room to go balls-to-the-walls crazy with sporadic synths! I can't wait to see what we can come up with next time around.

*W!SE the all.E (AKA Sir Jordanius and a bunch of other names): I'm not going to be a douche and babble on about myself, but I will explain a little bit of the backstory behind my verses.

The Fox McCloud verse was actually one of the original verses that I had from the very first version of this song, I've just matured my rap flow a little bit throughout the years to the point where I could execute the idea a little better. I'm still a looong ways off from actually sounding like Snoop (in my opinion at least), but I think people will enjoy the diverse "Blue Oni, Red Oni" contrast between my Fox and Paul's Falco.

The Jiggly-Pain verse was conceived with the previous version (the one I first tried to propose to the OCR community), but after honing my gayvoice chops this past year, I was able to do some lyrical doctoring and give a much better auto-tuned performance. Honestly, I was striving to make it sound as silly and cartoony as possible, but it ended up actually sounding... not too bad! XD My original outline to the team was that I did not want repeat series characters (as in since 1-UP took Mario, I didn't want to have a Luigi verse), but we eventually did away with that limitation, and I am veeery glad because all you Pokemanz fans out there should have a real treat analyzing Cam3's MewTupac, DiGi's Humpty Pika, and my Jiggly-Pain verses. NOTE: The actual chosen characters and lyrics were NOT planned at all; we just each ended up building off of each other and creating an amazing, constantly evolving rap mega-collab.

Speaking on things not being planned...

To be quite frank, my Game Watch verse was written and recorded late during the night at the spur of the moment while I was mixing everything. I saw that we probably wouldn't have enough vocals to fill all the bases, so I just came up with something; initially, I was trying to channel my "island roots" and make a Damian Marley delivery, yet I ended up settling with Kendrick Lamar because that's all that it sounded like to me. XD

Now... Cam3, LadyJ, and Aura were the last few to give me their verses. When I heard Cam3's verse in particular, a billion lightbulbs went off in my head. Again, I cannot stress the fact that NONE of the actual lyrics were planned, we were all just playing off of each other. DiGi recorded his Biggie Kong verse fairly early, and my Kendrick Lamar-esque GW verse was literally just a spur of the moment action. Once I heard Cam3's verse, I started rubbing my hands like Birdman so hard, I'm sure they could have combusted.

If the gears are not turning in your head, let me spell it out for you:

1. Go lurk on Wikipedia or YouTube or wherever and just do a brief search on "East Coast vs. West Coast Hip Hop." To be more specific, do a little bit of research on the amazing story yet tragic tale of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur's friendship-turned-rivalry.

2. Listen to Kendrick Lamar's verse in "Control."

3. OPTIONAL: Watch the first Pokémon movie. Yeah, that one... the one with the cheesy scene where their tears bring Ash back to life.

So in short, you can call it coincidence, fate, destiny, or just a stroke of highly unpredictable luck... but there is most definitely a good reason why I tossed my Kendrick Lamar GW verse in between Cam's MewTupac and DiGi's Biggie Kong; because, honestly, it would've been tossed aside, but there was just waaay too much fridge brilliance lying within that opportunity.

In concern to the music side of things, Shariq only gave me one specific rule: "Besides the narrator and crowds, please limit your sample usage. Go ahead and make 3 versions if you want and please try to use some more sources like from Brawl and the 64 version, but just watch the samples."

(Not his exact words, but the gist of it.)

With that in mind, I was thankful that Shariq essentially removed the leash and gave me free reign to go as over-the-top as I possibly could and make a grandiose tribute to the SSmash series music. I recorded original "samples" (as in, I recorded about 15-30 second jingles and reconstructions and re-instrumentations of the sources) and then chopped them up in similar fashion to traditional hip hop samplings of records. Then it was just a matter of bringing in XPRTJoe for some of the finishing touches.

*XPRTNovice: Last, but most certainly not least, that brings me to Joe who is surely not a foreign name to the OCR community.

Honestly, I don't want to make a recurring gimmick about bringing in instrumentalists for these O'Ssembled collabs, but when Shariq gave me the green-light to go crazy with all three versions and add a gratuitous instrumental jam section, I knew that there was only one specific person who would perfectly compliment Matt's synth in a duel.

Joe is very professional and obviously exceedingly talented, but the fact that he's also down-to-earth and easy to work with makes him all the more such a rare kind of person to work with. It's really an honor to have someone as versatile as Joe to help add some of the much-needed garnishes (programmed French horns, live flute) as well as the obviously beyond sexy OMGWTFFFF tenor sax solo. Everybody brought their "A" game, but part 3 definitely would not have the same intensity and fantastic grit without Joe's tenor solo; and I'm not sure how much of this is true, but the word on the street from Mr. Zieja himself is that he had only picked up tenor sax just a month before recording his parts, so this very well may be the first official Joe Zieja tenor zax debut. Quite the debut, huh?

As I said waaay earlier, I firmly believe there aren't any possible or necessary words to describe this triad of tributes to the Super Smash Bros. series, but I hope that these thoughts and comments opens up a little bit within each of us to show how much fun we had working on it.

Where OverClocked Assembled and the individual contributors go beyond this is anyone's guess (and I want to emphasize that it is a "revolving door" group, so we are in no way elitists or a tight-fisted clique), but on behalf of the whole team we hope you all enjoy this Hip Hop suite and you can rest assured that anything with the O'Ssembled "seal of approval" in the future is guaranteed to get your head bobbin' and your toes tappin', and maybe even your whole body groovin'.

Peace

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

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Tengen Toppa Dairantou artists comments

OverClocked Assembled (W!SE the all.E, 1-UP, MC Final Sigma, DiGi Valentine, metaphist, J.ME the Sista' Danius, Cam3, LadyJ, XPRTNovice, SuperiorX, The Auracle)

Basically Melee theme/opening is the "main" source because it's used as the recurring choruses/hooks. Part 1 is mostly Melee, Part 2 is a modern ode to Brawl, and Part 3 is an old-school throwback homage to 64.

Part 2 source breakdown:

0:00-0:33 - BRAWL main theme

0:34-0:55 - 64 All Clear/MELEE main theme

0:56-1:19 - BRAWL adventure map

1:20-1:43 - MELEE main theme

1:44-2:29 - BRAWL tournament registration/BRAWL main theme

2:30-2:52 - MELEE main theme

2:53-3:35 - BRAWL online practice

3:36-4:25 - BRAWL Target Smash

4:26-5:11 - MELEE/BRAWL main theme

5:12-5:35 - BRAWL all-star rest area

MC Final Sigma: Falcon Jay-Z was just kind of an arbitrary selection, but obviously Big L(uigi) had to happen. In my mind, I was emulating Jay-Z from Reasonable Doubt and then your standard Big L, minus the insane vulgar punchlines, but hey - I hope you like punz, guize, cuz that's what I brought to the party!

Just want to say, I'm so glad these tracks happened and that I could be a part of them. They're freakin' AWESOME, everybody seriously killed it, and there are a million memorable moments in this lyrical and musical tour de force. A lot of heads are going to be bopping for a long time, not only to these songs but to more OverClocked Assembled to come! But I think these joints should tide the unwashed masses over for quite a while in the meantime.

DiGi Valentine: This was an unbelievably fantastic idea for a track, by Jordan.

There was so much inspiration ranging from what Smash characters we could choose to what famous rappers we could mimic, we were all spoilt for choice.

Humpty Hump (from Digital Underground) is one accent I can do fairly well, and from a lyrical point of view Pikachu fitted that bill. Got to represent them Pokémons ya'll. Pika Pi.

The idea of a Biggie Smalls/Donkey Kong hybrid just hit me like an anvil and I couldn't get it out of my head. Plus, it meant also having the opportunity to mash together Diddy Kong with P. Diddy for the same verse, the ideas pretty much wrote themselves. I also had WAY too much fun recording ad-libs for some of the characters to be used in the background.

The other vocalists on the track, man. Some of the impersonations are so on point that during production I had to rewind and do a double take because it almost sounded like we had got the actual artists themselves on board.

Jordan's production is on a next level here, really going through a number of styles and moods. It's not a track, it's a journey. This was a crazy and absolutely fun song to work on and I'm so glad to have jumped on it.

Niyazi Sonmez

http://digivalentine.bandcamp.com

SuperiorX: These tracks are just hands-down a lot of fun! I really enjoyed hearing what started out as one early WIP and evolved into 3 distinct and epic tracks. Thanks to Jordan for bringing me in to do a little dueling synth solo in the extended version with XPRTNovice. It was great to just let loose and write something really fun!

1-UP: I listen to this song every morning while getting ready for work. It's so sicccckkkk, lol, I know almost everyone else's verse.

And whoever Falco was.... Damn, dude. You ripped that shit so hard I was like krumpin' and brushing my teeth at the same time.

W!SE the all.E/Sir Jordanius: Man, I tried hard to just type a short and sweet blurb about this. I really did. Plus, later on I plan on uploading some behind the scenes footage on how a few parts of the song were constructed (or the night when my sister and I were goofing off while recording our verses).

But you know how it is: when I've got a lot to say, I've just gotta whip out the epic novel long-winded Jordanius speeches. ;P In all honesty, there is no combination of words that I think any of us can formulate to truly convey how incredible this experience has been, but I'll do my best to shed a little light on what off in my mind while working with each talented contributor to this trilogy. Combined all three parts are about 20 minutes worth of music, so if there ever was a time to give a Jordanius epic novel backstory, it'd be now. XD

Firstly, to set the stage, my original concept for this SSmash rap "suite" was first conceived way back in 2008 (probably earlier, but I don't recall much memories before high school). I was just experimenting and first learning about sampling, and, while playing around with the Melee opening theme, I thought "hey... this sounds like it'd be a pretty cool beat." I made a quick mock-up with some former friends but didn't think much of it. A few years later, I hit up the Recruit and Collab forums, but I proposed my SSmash idea in such a haughty and ridiculous way that it's no surprise that nobody was feeling it (I essentially said "Hey, I already made lyrics and the beat. I just want people to re-rap my stuff and master the beat as is.")

After cooling down with my Kanye-itis attitude, I collab'd here and there and slowly tried to spread the word about starting a Hip Hop collective with whomever was/is interested. By now, most of you already know the rest of that story seeing as how "Time Traveller's Delight" turned out. What you *don't* know yet, though, is that immediately after wrapping up THAT collab, we each realized that we have a lot of potential within this collaborative group, and so we quickly started exchanging ideas for possible future O'Ssembled arrangements (Protip: be on the lookout for a few more, yes, even after this ). Since I had been eyeing the Apex thread for a while and I kept thinking to myself "maaaan..... I 'd really, really, reeeally want to revisit that SSmash idea again one day with the proper team," I decided to pitch a revised and more refined idea to Stardust iteration of O'Ssembled. The premise was/is to take any SSmash series character and create a bravado rap from their perspective, but in the style of a real-world emcee of their choice.

And, boy, am I glad that they accepted my request. In fact, everybody greatly exceeded it.

Not all of the "founding" OverClocked Assembled team could make it this time around due to various life circumstances, but I know that there is no shortage of eager Hip Hop heads within the VGM community, so in light of the Smash series fashion we've brought in some "newcomers." Here are my thoughts on each specific member that helped make this amazing trilogy possible:

*1-UP: Emmanuel is a very talented lyricist, and I've been eyeing his stuff for more than a year now. I'm glad to see him growing a solid fanbase more and more, and so having the pleasure of getting him on board for this was very surreal and inspiring. He actually responded much swifter than I expected, and throughout the entire process he was incredibly easy to work with (ha ha, plus I ended up returning the favor and collaborating with him for some of *his* projects as well). I knew it was inevitable that somebody would have to represent "the original" Super Mario, and I can't think of anybody more appropriate to have done so. 1-UP's Will Smith flow is damn-near flawless, and when I first heard his secondary Ness verse I had probably abused the "let's PK honest" line in my daily vernacular for days. It was quite a pleasure to have him on board.

*The Auracle: Getting Joe in for this was a little tough because he was actually one of the very first people to say "heck yes, I'm in," but. due to several varying circumstances, he ended up being one of the last few to get his verse to me. However, just like with "Time Traveller's Delight," I had absolutely NO idea what I was getting myself into when I finally received Aura's "DMX Snake" verse. Simply put, it was WELL worth the wait! I do not necessarily have a *favorite* verse because I feel like everybody brought a truly unique ingredient to the buffet, but to be honest, Aura's verse definitely had some snazzy spices and ecstatic flavors within it. Of all the possible ways to make a Snake rap, this was probably the greatest. I'm not sure what it is over there in the water of The Motherland, but whatever it is it's surely leading to the development of some siiiiick emcees.

*Cam3: So DiGi and I are always exchanging "the word" on the street. Whenever I'm Nick Fury-ing around behind the scenes trying to get the ball rolling with stuff he'll be occasionally dropping in with a Deadpool status alert for dope news. He first showed me Cam3 and LadyJ's stuff (I'll discuss LadyJ more below) around late Spring of 2013 and I kept pacing back and forth wondering how to find an appropriate song to collab with him on (I could sense a profound Andre 3000 aura within his flow, so in my mind I kept thinking about getting him on board for a "chill" Nujabes-type hip hop collab). As I said earlier, some of the original O'Ssembled members could not make it in for this time around, so while approaching the deadline with a few spots still left open DiGi finally said "Yo, let's just hit up Cam! What's the worst that could happen?"

The worst that could (and did) happen is that Cam3 fully delivered by bringing an absolutely drop-dead siiiick MewTupac verse! I knew that this guy had some rhymes under his belt, but I wasn't expecting to hear Tupac come out of hiding (lol) just to drop a ridiculous and truly "legendary" Pokémon rap verse.

*DiGi Valentine: It was a given that I just had to have DiGi on board for this. After Sonic CD, he and I have developed quite a bond, and we are constantly exchanging thoughts and ideas. At first, DiGi was very enthusiastic about the possibility of making a Biggie Smalls and Humpty Hump verse, but then for a while he felt a bit unsure if his additions would just hold the rest of the overall quality back. I hastily put together a demo showing him of what we could possibly do with detuned vocal processing, and he was in!

DiGi is quite the old-school emcee, and he really knows his stuff in regards to 80s and 90s rap, so I have absolutely no idea why he'd be uneasy about how his verse turned out because, in my honest opinion, they turned out bloody amazing. I first listened to his Humpty Pikachu verse when one of my cousins were around (and he's a casual Pokémon fan): there were so many witty punchlines throughout that my cousin and I just kept on looking back and forth at each other and shaking our jaw-dropped heads. Just like with 1-UP's ending line, DiGi's "I bang on these suckas like a conga drum" and "Run along kid, you need a gym badge" lines were instantly etched into my mind. Well, quite honestly, everybody produced clever, quotable lines, but DiGi's is overflowing with truly classic nuggets and I'm so pleased that he decided to hang in there.