"Leland Jackson [@Ahnnu] creates Footwork and Juke as Cakedog. Devoted to the dancer, DJ, and producer culture, and mentored by fixture Footwork originator R.P. Boo, Champions is a 23-minute digital mixtape album leading into the proper LP release Doggystyle, on Leaving Records later this year," Stones Throw wrote within a recent on-site press release attached to their latest mixtape release on sister label, Leaving Records. For those who may be unfamiliar, much like myself, "Footwork is a genre of related music and street dance that originated in Chicago during the 1980's," which was pioneered by Jackson's own mentor R.P. Boo, and was later "popularized outside Chicago by inclusion in the music video for Dude 'n Nem's 2007 single "Watch My Feet;"' from what I can understand, I would best appropriate Footwork/Juke to Kanye's T-Pain-assisted Alvin & The Chipmunks-evocative Graduation smash single, "Good Life." Cakedog's proper Menace In The Phantom follow-up, Champions is a Donuts-reminiscent, sample-driven instrumental Hip-Hop album fittingly described by Tiny Mixtapes as "a wild, tantalizing listen, with sub-bass thuds tickling your ankle socks via hyperactive rhythmic patterns, battle toms & tin-foil hi-hats snaking their way through the imagined circle and into your flesh wounds." It almost makes more sense to label 23-minute Champions as an EP rather than a mixtape, but it's still littered with a handful of ingeniously chopped, warped, and manipulated samples culled from Queen, Johnny Cash, Rich Homie Quan, and Travis Barker collaborator Yelawolf. Champions has been in constant rotation throughout this crazy week full of graduations, anniversaries, and everyday life occurrences and the closest thing I could likely equate Stones Throw's latest release to is Girl Talk's tantalizing sample-laden magnum opus, Night Ripper, which coincidentally, just very recently celebrated it's benchmark 10th birthday. Champions is currently available for FREE download from Stones Throw & Leaving Records or for $7.00 at Cakedog's own Bandcamp page, if you feel so compelled and seemingly serves as a stylistic prequel to his forthcoming album, Doggystyle.
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