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Brace Yourself: Run The Jewels' JU$T has been remixed by What So Not, and it's huge
The low-slinging, bass-heavy hip-hop remix is What So Not's first release since 2019, and here's hoping there's more to come.
Posted By Hayden Davies
4 years ago
It's been a quiet few years for What So Not. The Australian dance music heavyweight dropped his brilliant debut album Not All The Beautiful Things back in 2018, before commencing a pretty constant state of touring until coronavirus whisked that away from his in early-2020. He released a few little snippets in the time between - 2019's single We Can Be Friends most notably, as well as collaborations with Diablo and Flux Pavilion and a remix for The Presets featuring Slumberjack - but for the most part, he's been doubling down on his craft behind-the-scenes and experimenting with new sounds in the journey to what's next.
Today, we're getting the first taste of that labour in the form of a remix of Run The Jewels' charged 2020 highlight JU$T, which gets the What So Not remix treatment to mark his first release in about a year, and hopefully a bit of a snapshot of what's to come (and what it's going to sound like too). It's a welcome return for What So Not that details his evolution and progression in the time since we were last acquainted through a release like this, and that's worth celebrating in itself, even without considering how down-right good the remix actually is.
To remix Run The Jewels' JU$T is quite a monster task in itself. Aided by Pharrell Williams, the track's production plucks influence from the somewhat minimalist yet capturing production of The Neptunes but charges it up with Run The Jewels' notorious fierceness and focus - something that really surfaces on JU$T as they tap into the musical force of Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, for one of the most charged singles of the year: "Mastered economics 'cause you took yourself from squalor / Mastered Instagram 'cause you can instigate a follow / Look at all these slave masters posin' on yo dollar," raps Pharrell in the song's opening.
What So Not takes the minimalist energy of the song's production and fuses it with the rush buried amongst its high-octane choruses, elevating that production to match its heaving verses through the low-end prowess we've come to love from What So Not over the years. The end result is low-slung and bass-heavy, thick with 808 kicks and soaring synth which dart amongst the trading verses of Killer Mike, EL-P and Zack de la Rocha.
It's a fun time, and although we wish we could admire its energy surrounded by a few thousand of our closest mates, What So Not is ensuring that there's a bit of energy to come from the country's dance music world in the year ahead - and hopefully this is just the start.
Take a dive into the remix below:
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