Team Teamwork’s “The Ocarina of Rhyme” – Explicit Lyrical Content Ahead

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Mashups are always fun to listen to. Remember when everyone in the world was taking Jay-Z’s “Black” album and mixing it with other famous works? There was the Gray album (Beatles’ “White” plus Jay-Z’s “Black”), or Jay-Zeezer’s “Black & Blue” (using Weezer’s “Blue” album). Those were hip albums, right?

Earlier this week, a collaborative group called “Team Teamwork” released a ten-track digital mashup using music from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and a variety of mainstream and indie hip-hop artists. The results are surprisingly enjoyable. Replacing the original samples with newly-crafted sample loops from the classic 64-bit Zelda soundtrack makes these hip-hop works, which I would normally loathe, into something I can definitely enjoy. Artists represented include Aesop Rock, Common, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z (of course), and many others.

Head over to 8tracks.com ^[2] to check it out for yourself! But please take note, there is no censorship on this album, so be ready for some vulgar language mixed in with “Lost Woods,” “Goron Village,” “Great Fairy’s Fountain,” and others. Now if only they had mashed something up with Gerudo Valley. That would’ve been beautiful, ne? Or maybe not! How do you feel about having classic Zelda tunes “mashed” with a genre of music you may or may not like? Does it bastardize the value of the song, or does it show the power and versatility of music in general?