Rap or Rock?

by Ben Linton

Okay guys, so here’s a new post that’s off the topic of sports for once. Lets talk music. Lets talk drums. As some of you may know, Travis Barker is one of my favorite drummers. He was really great with blink-182, and I try to learn how to play his songs all the time myself. Recently I have been hearing and seeing a lot of his new work, Travis Barker Remixes, where he takes a rap song and drums over it. He has done this to many songs, including “Crank That” by Soulja Boy, “Low” by Flo-Rida, “Dope Boys” by The Game, “Umbrella” by Rihanna, and many more. This adds a new element to the song and gives it more of an edge than previously.

^Barker’s most recent remix to a song by Drake (caution: explicit lyrics)

However, this is not Barker’s best drumming. Although the rhythms he makes are catchy, they are rather simplistic. This experiment is very creative, but the actual quality of the music is not very good. Barker really only shows his talents a few times when he does fills. Barker’s best drumming is and always will be with blink-182. One of Barker’s many drum skills is how fast that he actually can play while still sounding great. Most rap songs are slow and repetative, while punk rock songs can be very fast, so this suits Barker better and plays more to his strengths.

^Barker drumming for blink-182 (Caution: explicit lyrics)

I’m not dissing Barker’s remixes by any means, I actually like most of them. He can pretty much pull off anything he wants in the studio because he is that great. But the point that I am trying to get across is that for people who do not know him or his work, his remixes are not his best drumming.