Good combinations

While I was out Xmas shopping for my girl's nieces and nephews, I snatched up a present for myself, Cohen Morano's The Rest Is Up to You.


Cohen is a third-grader who likes to paint water colors. His father is Aye Jay Morano, the artist/wiseass who brought you the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book, the Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book, the Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book, the recent Country Music Fun Time Activity Book and this awesome cover:


(Still available for free download here and here!)

Anyhow, Aye Jay is a pretty well-connected guy and he started offering Cohen's watercolors to various art world friends for further embellishment--art stars like Shepard Fairey, Barry McGee, Frank Kozik, Matt Loomis, David Choe and lots more took Cohen's pictures and dressed them up with further layers of words, images, character, colors, etc.

A lot of the resulting pictures are pretty great but my favorite part is usually Cohen's interpretations of what the new pictures represent in the blurbs that accompany some of them. While these comments could easily succumb to cuteness or preciousness, many are perceptive and I find them endearing because they remind me a little bit of what it was like to be a kid and to constantly try and make sense of the world from whatever fragments of information drifted down to me.

To choose one more or less at random (i.e., I was able to scan this one in full without messing up the binding):


I take it that Cohen's orginal drawing is the colorful part; the remainder of the picture was contributed by Brent Rollins, who designed Ego Trip and too many great album covers to mention. Cohen's blurb beneath reads: "'Big up Cohen.' What does that mean? Respect? Respect Cohen? Hmmm... this one makes me think it is raining crayons. An umbrella is needed. Yeah, an umbrella. Just a regular umbrella is all that is needed. I am the person holding the umbrella-- I did not get damaged. I am the only one who has not gotten damaged yet." I hope he never does.

So, uh, not really the same thing, but sort of the same thing, The Rest Is Up to You got me thinking about songs where one artist has taken another person's music unaltered and just layered something new on top. These were the three that came to me off the bat:


Ice-T: "Soul On Ice" (Sire, 1988)

"Hustler's Convention" + "Harlem Buck Street Dance" = the best.


Ghostface Killah: "Holla" (Def Jam, 2004)


Ghostface Killah: "Big Girl" (Def Jam, 2006)

When I first heard that Ghost was releasing an R&B album, Wizard of Poetry, I was halfway hoping it would be along the lines of these.