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Girl Talk "Secret Diary"

Let's get this out of the way right now - the music of Gregg Gillis'salter ego "Girl Talk" is a direct descendant of the idea begun withKid606's 'Attitude' compilation - violently cut-up and processedhip-hop songs and top 40 hits, a digital blender of blatant copyrightinfringement. Now that I've made that comparison, I'm going to try andnot mention Kid606 again, and instead focus on the positive. In lessthan forty minutes, the ten tracks on this disc disembowel everythingfrom Destiny's Child to the New Kids on the Block to Cyndi Lauper tothe Price Is Right theme, and the result is admittedly, pretty damnfunny - for instance, splicing Joan Osborne together with some hip hoptrack that I'm not hip enough to recognize, to create "What if God was/ One that don't give a fuck?" or "All the prophets / Gave me headbehind the wheel" and other adolescently clever reconstructions. Gillisis at his best when he lets the humor overrule the desire to simplymake noise, and he's got that humor in spades. Since most of the tracksare rooted in overprocessed sound, listening to the entire disc can geta littile grating, and at the worst, a little boring; one of thereasons 'Attitude' was so damn good was because it had a strong theme(N.W.A worship/destruction), the 14 artists each had a differentapproach, and, most importantly, it was short and sweet. (Technically,I'm not mentioning Kid606 here...oops i just did). But even if the discis a little long, Gillis mans his laptop (or whatever) fairly well, andthere are a few really worthwhile moments - like "Jumpin[g]," a3-minute "de-mix" of Destiny's Child that (I'm really sorry) echoesKid606's "Straight Outta Compton." And the first track, "Let's StartThis Party Right," is pretty hilarious in it's opening sample (which Iwon't give away, but check out the clip below). - 

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