The Other Ocarina of Rhyme

Normally completely useless, the nocturnal chats of Nate and I can occasionally lead to productivity—in tonight’s case, the discovery of something wrongfully ignored by the Legend of Zelda community due to some truly unfortunate timing. In one corner, we have Team Teamwork’s well-known blending of chopped-up Zelda tunes with various rappers, underground and mainstream alike. Some combinations worked well: Virginian brothers Clipse trading rhymes over a flipped Lost Woods sample and Aesop Rock riding funky version of the Goron Village theme, most notably. The rest? Creative, sure, but more awkward than anything. In the other corner, we’ve got Sleaze, who, similarly, constructed beats based on Koji Kondo’s musical contributions to our favorite series, but instead of ending the creative process there, he took it to the next level by adding his own rhymes to the instrumentals.

Back when we originally posted about Team Teamwork, Sleaze told us about his project, also titled Ocarina of Rhyme down in the c-section. He planned to release his on March 17th; Team Teamwork’s dropped the 16th, eventually blew up, and left the former largely unnoticed. Fast forward about a year later, and hopefully this can be fixed.

Most of you should, at the very least, appreciate the beats here. Many of the same samples found on the other Ocarina of Rhyme show up here to get flipped, in my opinion, much more tastefully. And the rhymes, thankfully, are the polar opposite of what one would expect from someone rapping about a video game: Sleaze isn’t some suburban, pre-pubescent kid hopped up on Mountain Dew doing a Weird Al impression; he’s a dude with talent.

The mixtape is available for a free download over at Sleaze’s blog, but kids not old enough to purchase Twilight Princess be warned: there’s adult content on just about every track.

Below you can find “A Link to the Past,” “The Legend of Sleaze,” and “Potions”.

The rest over at our YouTube page.