Song of The Day #19 - jj - 'My Life'

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Ventroliquist dolls are getting more real by the day.

jj sometimes work on what really should be an awful premise. They're a cool glacial (read as 'scandinavian') indie group that aside from releasing their own originals are also pretty keen on covering and reimagining modern songs, usually of the R&B/commercial hip-hop persuasion. Sounds dreadful doesn't it? You might think it'd be too cool for school, patronising and that these remakes would lose all aspects of what made the original songs great. With this song at least, you'd be dead wrong.

jj - 'My Life'


Grindin' with my eyes wide.

In case you didn't know, the original of this song is by a rapper called The Game. Now, he once released an album that, with my hat tipped to him, bounced from start to finish called 'The Documentary'. Since then, he's fallen out with all and sundry (Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem) and been as patchy as you like. He's every single west coast cliche you could ever imagine embodied to the point where he's a bit cartoonish. Still, he released a song about five years ago with Lil Wayne that coincided well with the latter really starting to get some serious exposure and it was consequently a big hit. It was called 'My Life' and this is embedded below. Listen out for Lil Wayne's attempt at having the most auto-tuned and processed hook ever recorded. Once you've done that give the reworked jj effort above a try. It's a million times colder, realer and harder hitting than Game's. This is how a song should sound when it's been reimagined. Rebuilt from bottom up and in this case, ice pumped through its veins.

I'm grindin' until I'm tired
They say you ain't grindin' until you die
So, I'm grindin' with my eyes wide
Lookin' to find a way through the day
The life of the night

Dear Lord, you took so many of my people
I'm just wondering why you haven't taken my life
What the hell am I doing right?