Shut Up, Dude is the latest mixtape to hit the internet from slacker art rap / Dutchpop / world music / weed edge / hare krishna hard core / freak folk / Rolling Stone India cover boys / music trio Das Racist (be sure check their detailed Wikipedia page).

These dudes are probably most well known for their masterpiece "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell", reputed by some to be amongst the greatest masterpieces of the 21st century, and "Chicken and Meat" maybe, both of which appear on this (free) collection. Often, when a group produces novelty tracks such as these, they are forever pigeonholed as a joke act useful only for the occasional laugh and nothing much to be taken seriously (Goldie Lookin Chain?, Flight of the Conchords?), but occasionally they can amount to something a bit more substantial and do quite well out of it (Eminem?, Flight of the Conchords?).

To avoid this, Das Racist possibly could have omitted these tracks, given that the album is free and there is little incentive to "sell" on the basis of the well known tracks. The dudes themselves acknowledge this potential situation, stating in an interesting if weirdly written piece in The Animal Show We're not making music that's instantly appealing. We dabble with non-sequiturs, dadaism, repetition, repetition. We make dance music while talking about not-dancey things. We say things that on the surface can seem pretty dumb but it's a mask on some Paul Laurence Dunbar shit for actual discontent with a lot of shit in the world... A lot of people hear 'Pizza Hut Taco Bell' and then have preconceived notions about our entire body of work, that falls pretty flat if you ask me. So yeah, they know...

Shut Up, Dude is a considerable collection of 17 tracks clocking in at an hour and 4 minutes, and is allegedly comprised of bits of old stuff and bits of new stuff with an overlapping Venn diagram center of weird shit. The first 3 tracks are a bit so-so before "Rainbow in the Dark" kicks in. This track, even though it begins with something about tiny burgers at White Castle and is mostly about eating fast food, as are it seems a lot of the tracks on Shut Up, Dude, is amongst the finest tracks on the mixtape, frequently satisfyingly dropping the "dude" bomb.

A particular stand out track is "Nutmeg", which is either a kind of weird ode to spices or that Ghostface Killah track with exact same name and exact same beat. This track, as well as the Madvillian "America's Most Blunted" sampling track "Deep Ass Shit (You'll Get It When You're High)", bring to mind the likes of Plastic Little (those guys still around or what?), with whom Das Racist arguably share a sonic heritage of puerile rhymes spat over a mixture of familiar beats and weird ass Korean dance pop sounding shit. But then there is the track "Don Dada" that is drawled out in parts in an almost 50 cent like parody, "Fake Patios" and "One Dollar Can" mostly in a type of faux Jamaican reggae that gets a bit tiring, and "Koochie Dip City" with its mid-80s New Romantic sounding intro to switch it up on you (to get an idea of their musical interests there is an excellent Das Racist compiled compilation Needle Exchange 009 available here for free also).

Thus Shut Up, Dude is a challenging work comprised of odd-ball humour delicately juxtaposed with very clever and original stuff that seems to always be three steps ahead of where you think it might go. Give it a go, you have not heard anything like this. That, and it is very reasonably priced at zero dollars.

Download here.

Track Listing

1. Who's That? Brooown!

2. You Oughta Know

3. Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell

4. Rainbow in the Dark

5. Fake Patios

6. Nutmeg

7. Shorty Said (Gordon Voidwell Remix)

8. Chicken and Meat

9. I Don't Owe Nobody Shit

10. Ek Shaneesh

11. Hugo Chavez

12. I Don't Want to Deal with Those Monsters

13. Don Dada

14. One Dollar Can

15. Coochie Dip City

16. Deep Ass Shit (You'll Get It When You're High)

17. Shut Up, Dude