Last year, glitch-pop band Ratatat decided to apply their ability to lay down beats to their very own remix project. This album featured tracks by Missy Elliot, Kanye, Dizzee Rascal, G-Unit and others, but the one remix that stands out the most is this Beanie Sigel track

You may recall the original "When You Hear That" from 2003's State Property - The Chain Gang, vol. 2 compilation. You know, it's weird, and seems to be more common as of late, but in situations where one artist will feature other artists on their song, the guest artists tend to completely take over the song and outshine their host. This song is no exception: Beanie Sigel has a nice little verse at the beginning-- good, but totally unaffecting. As soon as Dirt McGirt (aka O.D.B.) enters with his own crazy fucked up flow, you forget that Beans was even there in the first place. The highlight of Dirt's verse for me is when he makes an attempt at rhyming the words "ameriCANa", "Montana", and "marijuana" all in one stanza. Only Dirt McGirt could pull off such a blatant rhyming blunder with grace, and he pulled it off here with fleeting brilliance. Peedi Crakk finishes off the track adding his own personal flair and flavor to mix things up a bit, and even further pushes out of our heads who's supposed to be staking claim to this track in the first place.

The original version features a thin, almost boom bap-like beat with a rather irritating siren throughout the entire track ("that's the sound of the police"). It works, and there have been many remixes made of this track that each also work in their own similar respects. But when Ratatat got ahold of it, they laid the vocals over a beat they concocted that sounds COMPLETELY different than anything else that's been tried before, yet works PERFECTLY with the vocal track. PERFECTLY. The beat is somewhat reminiscent of that which is used on Ratatat's debut album track "Crips", and seems to me to be fairly influenced by the Neptunes. When you hear this remix of this song, you will most likely forget that the original and any other remixes ever existed in the first place.

- Katie Lewis