Teenburger: Rock the Discotech (Jo's Boutique remix)

‘Tour the land, rock with fans—now ain’t that a job?’

Oh my God you guys, there’s a new hip hop supergroup in town, and they’re called Teenburger. Teenburger is Timbuktu and Ghettosocks of Backburner, joined by Jorun Bombay on the boards, and they’ve just dropped Burgertime, a weird, sort-of concept album about the last day of high school. Their Facebook page’s bio sums it up more hilariously than I ever could. (The stage names and Beastie Boys references are a nice touch.)

The album is pretty good. Jorun is an interesting producer with a penchant for the stripped-down sound, while still keeping an old school edge—cuts, scratches, ‘canon’ samples, etc. He did a track on the legendary Buck 65’s latest album (one of the better ones on it), and he’s worked with Timbuktu in the past, to great effect. Now, while I’m a big fan of Timbuktu, I’m slightly less enthusiastic about Ghettosocks—he’s competent, but he never really blows me away. Still, it’s always good times when the two of them get together, and this album follows that trend, for the most part. I wasn’t as blown away as I was expecting to be based on the billing. But it’s a good album, and it’s on Bandcamp, which means you can get it in FLAC and your money goes straight to the artist, so there’s really no reason not to cop this.

This track is one of the standouts. (Listen to that tag-teaming! This is Run-D.M.C.-calibre.) Interestingly, this is actually a remix of a track on Ghettosock’s album Treat of the Day, and the album also features a Jorun remix of a More or Les / Fresh Kils joint Timbuk and Socks appeared on, but this particular mix doesn’t actually appear on Burgertime—instead, there’s a second remix, which I think I like a bit better.

Of course, the question is, is it a copout when artists pad out their albums with remixes of old hits? I don’t know, I guess in some cases it could be, but I don’t think it is here. While I don’t think the More or Les / Fresh Kils remix is an improvement in the slightest, I actually don’t mind seeing the remixes here. They’re all good tracks, for one. And, I mean, it’s a supergroup album to begin with—the remixes and retakes feel right at home. ‘Chemistry’ is a particularly interesting track, ostensibly a remix but featuring all-new lyrics apart from the chorus. On the whole, I’m down with the revisits.

Backburner is having a blockbuster year so far. Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t any good Canadian hip hop.