Sometimes YouTube music mashups can be pretty naff but sometimes they come from the mind of Bill McClintock. His YouTube channel McClintock Mashups boasts over 230,ooo subscribers for a reason. His latest is a combination of Slayer and Prince in the genuinely groovy ‘Crazy Black Magic’.
The mashup brings together Prince’s infectious ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ with Slayer’s thrashing ‘Black Magic’, with a little bit of Led Zeppelin‘s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and Van Halen‘s ‘I’m the One’ thrown in for good measure.
The pounding synth Prince backing track provides the perfect foundation for the track, maintaining the funk throughout. Slayer frontman Tom Araya’s howling vocals somehow sync perfectly over it, his screams lining up wonderfully with the tempo and rhythm. Some classic Prince vocals are tossed in now and again as well.
The video is also worth a watch, featuring edited live footage of both Prince and Araya doing their thing to massive crowds (see below).
‘Let’s Go Crazy’ was a big hit for Prince and The Revolution in 1984. It was the opening track on both the album and the film Purple Rain. It became Prince’s second chart-topping track on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and was a future staple of his live shows.
‘Black Magic’, meanwhile, was taken from Slayer’s 1983 debut studio album Show No Mercy. Despite coming in for criticism due to its poor production quality, tracks like ‘Black Magic’ were performed regularly at the thrash metal band’s later concerts.
With Prince and Slayer both being around in the 80s and 90s, did we miss out on a scene-altering thrash metal and funk genre mashup? What might have been.
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McClintock has previously mashed up another Slayer piece, once mixing ‘Raining Blood’ with The B-52s iconic ‘Rock Lobster’ in ‘Raining Lobsters’. Other impressive creations include the Deep Purple and Bee Gees mashup ‘You Should Be Smoking’ and the Van Halen and Jackson 5 mix ‘Mean Machine’.
Check out ‘Crazy Black Magic’ (Prince and Slayer mashup):
