mixtape maestro (2.0)

Call us losers, but since “Meet Me Halfway” started getting endless spins through our earbuds, we’ve been scouring the World Wide Web daily hoping to come across some amazing remix that’ll only deepen our undying adoration towards the Black Eyed Peas single.

There haven’t been many to emerge (which is strange, seeing as though “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling” inspired what felt like a million revamps between them both), but we did come across a couple that earned at least a couple repeat listens:

Rokuro’s Tidy Club Mix:

Helmed by Japan’s DJ Rokuro, this one follows a relatively simple remixing formula, accenting the original track with some catchy synths while giving that vocoder-assisted bridge (the track’s best non-Fergie moment) a well-appreciated repeat spin.

DL: “Meet Me Halfway (Rokuro’s Tidy Club Mix)” (alt)

Anna & Ruby’s Intergalactic Booty-Shaker Remix:

This second (and sadly, MP3 link-less) one was created by the same girls who delivered that cutesy acoustic cover of Drake’s “Best I Ever Had”. And like that treat, this one is equally impressive in a lo-fi, “let’s throw something together during a sleepover” kind of way, replacing Fergie’s laborious wails with a surprisingly effective Cassie-like featherweight vocal while it’s beat bypasses state-of-the-art Y3K-aiming production complexity for a simple electro throb.

Black Eyed Peas are finally moving on to a third single from their The E.N.D. set, and we’re actually quite excited about this. Not only because it seems we’re finally going to get a airplay break from the US chart-topping stranglehold of previous E.N.D. singles “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling” (they’ve been at the top of the Hot 100 for a record-breaking TWENTY-THREE STRAIGHT WEEKS people-that’s more than enough love for two songs that were irksome long before they got played 50 billion times!!!), but also due to the fact that the album’s official junior joint will be the far more likable “Meet Me Halfway”, previously hyped here as “an amped-up ballad which bites the soaring drive of The Killers’ “When You Were Young” in it’s epic “oh-oh-oh” melody while The Dutchess commits a solid vocal performance that hints of a newly reinvigorated interest in her old, childhood Cyndi Lauper/ Madonna records” (ahh, we’re so good when we try).

And look, the track has already begun inspiring hot remixes.

Likely the first of many, this re-haul by the production duo of Joshua Bass and Aaron Jones is tricked out with some trash-can percussion stomp, synthesized marching band fanfare and flashes of electric guitar, nicely competing with the club-ready beat of the will.i.am/ Keith Harris-helmed original in the kitchen-sink, dance-hip-pop-crafting department.

DL: “Meet Me Halfway (Joshua Bass & Aaron Jones Remix)” (alt)

We have a confession to make.

For the past couple weeks-starting with our delayed appreciation for “Boom Boom Pow” and continuing with a fondness for the superb “two-for-one” deal that was “Imma Be”-we’ve slowly come to terms with the fact that we actuallly might kinda love the Black Eyed Peas. GASP! SHOCK! HORROR!

Now don’t worry, we’re not entirely insane (we totally despite their “Mazel Tov”-citing new single, “I Gotta Feeling” for being just a little too damn cheery), but we’ve got to admit that two other E.N.D. tracks that have boiled to the surface recently have got us completely enraptured by the foursome’s shameless, 80′s new wave-meets-hip-pop meshings.

On “Alive”, pinings after an old love might be delivered in the vein of a SNL teen-pop spoof (Notes Fergie: “You are my best friend and boyfriend/ Now it seems like you’re my worst friend/ I gotta do soul searching/ Without you I’m a whole different person…”), but it’s the suave dance sonics subtly bumping beneath the lyrics that ultimately win you over.

That same expert juggling of (guilty)pleasure and heartached Fergie showstealing-ness is captured on the even better “Meet Me Halfway”, an amped-up ballad which bites the soaring drive of The Killers’ “When You Were Young” in it’s epic “oh-oh-oh” melody while The Dutchess commits a solid vocal performance that hints of a newly reinvigorated interest in her old, childhood Cyndi Lauper/ Madonna records.

We’re sure that once we get a full listen to the rest of The E.N.D. and the many embarrassments it’ll no doubt provide, our current kooky infatuation with will, Ferg and the other (less important) two will subside a-plenty, but for the moment, we’re officially getting in line with the millions of other BEP fanatics around the world we used to so enjoy publicly mocking before.

The E.N.D. drops June 9th. As a bonus, peep this nice “(Not Just) Knee Deep”-sampling remix of the Peas’ ’03 single “Shut Up” (found on The E.N.D. Deluxe Edition) below:

DL: “Shut The Phunk Up” (alt)

Can you believe that “Boom Boom Pow” is currently celebrating it’s seventh week atop the Hot 100? That when the record books sum up the biggest single successes of 2009, this joint may actually be the one atop the heap? Now think about this frightening notion: we’re starting to get the feeling that it won’t be the last trip to the top of the Pops that the group makes this year, and even more scarier, we might not even mind the next record to possibly get there.

Recent album cut leakage “Imma Be” is basically a sequel to “Boom Boom Pow”, dipping into the same recipe of club-friendly electro-hop production and dumb-to-the-infinite-power dialogue that The E.N.D. lead single brought to the table, but while it took us a minute to come around to “BBP” (with it being played like twelve millions time a day, wasn’t like we really had a chance to escape it), on first listen, “Imma Be” is actually…not…that…bad.

Of course you have to mentally delete the accompanying lyrics (more silly gibberish about being “next level” and “futuristic”) and the “A Milli”-styled stutter hook scheme should have really been retired back when Beyonce adopted it, but when the passable marching band thump of the first halve suddenly transitions into a frenzied Euro-dance thingamajig mid-way through, “Imma Be” immediately morphs from an eye-rolling “why can’t they just disapear” to a brow-raising “I think I might need to hear this again!”.

If this turns out to be the second single, and not the rumored-to-be official “BBP” follow-up (and truly atrocious) “I Gotta Feeling” that’s also making the blog rounds right now, the Peas may actually have a stranglehold over the Summer just as they did in the Spring. This time with nary a complaint from us.