Unglued Reviews

Punk Goes Crunk is without doubt the most hilarious concept of the Punk Goes… compilation series so far, and I don’t expect anyone will buy it expecting more than a novelty or an ironic party album. Good: if you take either your punk or your crunk too seriously, stay away, because this collection isn’t really much of either – it’s mostly indie and pop-punk bands covering popular hip hop, rap and urban tracks.

There’s no consistent approach to the source material: some bands rework their chosen target in their own style (The Maine and All Time Low remake Akon’s I Wanna Love You and Rihanna’s Umbrella, respectively, as sugary slices of pop-punk, while The Devil Wears Prada do Big Tymers’ Still Fly as metalcore), some take it as a challenge to see how closely they can replicate the original (mainly Emanuel’s take on Purple Ribbon All-Stars’ Kryptonite), some opt for the middle ground (the guitars-and-beats approach of Forever The Sickest Kids on Men In Black, My American Heart’s California Love), others take a comedic approach (Lil Jon’s Put Yo Hood Up – incidentally the only track to originally really qualify as “crunk” – is performed by Set Your Goals as if Yoda was rapping, Say Anything’s reading of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Got Your Money has an affected, near-spoken vocal delivery), and then there’s a few completely out-of-the-blue left turns (Hot Rod Circuit’s bluesy version of Snoop Dogg’s Gin And Juice, The Secret Handshake deciding Skee-Lo’s mid ’90s hip hop single I Wish should be done as vocodered electropop).

Fans of the cover bands involved are likely to take to this more kindly than fans of the original tracks, but even so there’s a fair few duds – while there’s plenty of gimmicky fun, the only bands that offer repeated listening pleasure are The Maine, The Devil Wears Prada, Person L’s respectful version of The Roots & Cody Chesnutt’s The Seed (2.0), and New Found Glory, who close the compilation with a mellow, guitar-based version of Arrested Development’s Tennessee.

Owen Heitmann