In 2007, journalist and musician Abdullah Saeed, who also goes by the nickname Blame the Kid, was stabbed in the neck in Baltimore when a pack of kids tried to steal his phone. Because of nerve damage in his neck and shoulder, he wasn’t able to do much beside pop painkillers and watch Batman The Animated Series. After months of isolation and Batman-watching, Abdullah said that he “got so fucked up and engrossed that Batman started to enter my dreams.” The music and storylines from the show got stuck in his head, so he started to chop them up and add beats and breaks using Reason. After eight months of this, he had a whole album.
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"Beginning to end, it plays like a mini movie," said Abdullah, who is also an editor at Motherboard sibling “The Creators Project”http:/thecreatorsproject.com. "I’ve been a huge Batman fan my whole life, and much of that love was driven by this show."The album, Dark Knight Rises: Unoriginal Sound Track, takes melodic and vocal samples cut from the show, including the show’s unique scores by Shirley Walker, and mixes them with early '90s beats. Each villain gets his or her own track, while several focus on the life and plight of Bruce Wayne / Batman. There are resonances here with many comic-influenced hip-hop producers like GZA and MF Doom, but another useful touchstone is 2010’s Wu-Tang vs The Beatles by Tom Caruana, in both sound and technique of sampling from only one source. The result is a pretty groove-inducing 45ish minutes, great for beat and Batman enthusiasts alike.Of course, you may want to think twice before playing this in the background of your next house party. There’s an unmistakable darkness to the album that, at times, can make you feel like the songs are being shouted at you while you crouch in a sewer and cover your ears. This quality might be attributed to Saeed’s state of mind in the heat of production: "I really could have used Batman that night I was stabbed, and the themes of crime and revenge really resonated with me at the time I made this."