A.V. Club: Best of the Decade

Artist Girl Talk

  • Girl Talk

The latest to line up behind a mash-up phenomenon that seemed to have died away, Girl Talk is Pittsburgh producer Gregg Gillis, who threw down samples of James Taylor, Smashing Pumpkins, Kanye West, and approximately 144 others on his debut, Night Ripper. The record fared well on lots of 2006 best-of lists, thanks to bizarre juxtapositions that work in terms that owe to more than mere novelty—a cut-and-paste euphoria that continues on Girl Talk’s 2008 follow-up, Feed The Animals. The disc is an even more seamless and dizzying blend of pop-culture flotsam, with Yo La Tengo brushing against Busta Rhymes and Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” grafted gorgeously onto Jay-Z’s “Roc Boys”—amalgams that generally play as dance-floor chargers. 

Updated 09/15/2009

« Back to the A.V. Club home

Share Tools

the great avclub content auto-recycler-o-matic