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Music

The Potential of Kanye West's "Black Skinhead" Has Finally Been Realized by Catfish and The Bottlemen

You'd think "Black Skinhead" would be hard to improve upon, but wait until you hear this Welsh indie rock band mash it up with Kasabian!

We like the song "Black Skinhead" by Kanye West. When it came out in 2013 we praised the way it dealt with race and class in America in a way that was both deeply abstract and everyday.

It's pretty much a perfect song.

I guess the one thing that might improve it is if instead of opening with those pounding Gesaffelstein drums, it began with BBC host Fearne Cotton reading out some tweets and saying things like "tearing it up," "totally in love," "new faves," and "mash-up."

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And then, maybe instead of Kanye collaborating with the likes of Daft Punk and Brodinski on the track, it was actually performed by Catfish and the Bottlemen—a white four-piece indie band from North Wales best known for being the inaugural winners of the BBC Introducing award and offering "cum sarnies" [Ed. Note: "sarnies" is a British term for "sandwiches" that a mom might use] on the merch stand.

Also, now that I come to think of it, maybe if it had some bluesy guitar in it and sounded like a demo that the 22-20s would have deleted off their hard drive back in 2005, that would be an improvement.

And if I were just going to tweak it a little bit more, I'd actually "mash it up" with Kasabian's "Shoot The Runner" because I think the rich sonic tapestry Kanye created would really benefit from lumbering festival rock.

And for a finishing touch it would be great if it was entirely decontextualized from the racial politics from which it was born and instead the whole thing acted as a lazy bit of positioning by a band trying to prove that even people who don't own multiple pairs of winklepickers could be into them.

Mmm, one last thing, could you meaninglessly shout "Let's Go To LA Baby!" at the end?

Perfect!

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