Album Review: Various Artists- Catch The Throne: The Mixtape

Various Artists

Catch The Throne: The Mixtape

*** out of *****

I bet George RR Martin never envisioned a world where Magazeen would drop a pronunciation of "Iron Thrannnne" like he does on his Reggaeton bumper "Iron Throne" but these are the days we live in...winter is coming.

The immense popularity of the excellent HBO series has given rise to tons of spin offs, events and promo work, this free mix-tape being one of the most inventive and will possibly open up the series to a new generation of fans. Catch The Throne mixes established and up and coming hip hop/reggaeton/experimental artists performing Game of Throne inspired songs.      

While the lyrics are the neat twist, the music all come straight from the show as well, weaving the score behind beats and intro clips that let us hear Tyrion Lannister quotes as well as a fire commands from Daenerys Targaryen. It is the combining of hip-hop boasting and the mythical struggle for power that meshes well. 

Big Boi's flow opens things up on "Mother Of Dragons" and it instantly brings a smile when he combines the world of Westeros with his own knee rehab; like most tunes here it is quick, clocking in and out before the idea becomes stale. As with any mix-tape some experiments (Snow Tha Product's "Fire", Bodega Bamz "Win Or Die") work better then others (Dee Goodz "The Parallel", Kilo Kish "Magical Reality"). Wale gets bonus points for incorporating the bad ass musical theme to the show into his "King Slayer" closeing a fun mix of styles.

Extra time and notes need to be given to one track in particular though, easily for fans of hip hop and the novels Dominik Omega gets the all-star nod with "Arya's Prayer". While the other artists combine snippets of the fantasy world into their tracks Omega seems to be a mega fan as he stays strictly with Arya dealing with her insane journey. His complete insertion into the realm is exhilarating and ending the chorus with "Valar Morghulis: All Men Must Die" makes it is impossible not to get juiced up a highlight of this pretty whacky/great idea.
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A neat combo. We just finished up  A Dance With Dragons and while we are invested heavily, we actually think HBO is doing a better job with the shows then Martin is doing with the books...but that is for a nerdy conversation at a bar over drinks. Today we got some cool hip hop with a fantasy mix.

You can hear the whole thing here:


and a bonus track from Dominik Omega who did a song before this came came out and it makes sense. He is great at this:
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