ReMix:Final Fantasy VIII "We Are the Winners" 3:19

Some of the best VGM arrangements are tongue-in-cheek or at least a step or two removed from a shitpost, so it's in the spirit of the not-so-serious that Final Fantasy VIII: SeeDs of Pandora co-director Jorito recruited a party to create a victorious rap for FF8's battle victory theme! It took a village, for sure:

• Jorito: arrangement, lyrics, guitar, production, mixing
• Numoon: lyrics, rap (Raijin)
• Sirenstar: lyrics, vocals (Fujin)
• Cyril the Wolf: vocals (Seifer)
• Dewey Newt: trombone
• TSori: trumpet

As always, Jorito's got the rizz when it comes to team-ups, so anytime Jorito connects with collaborators, even less common genres in his quiver end up sounding strong, including hip hop:

"This track kinda started out as a joke, with Darkflamewolf, Natalie (Sirenstar), and me brainstorming a bit about a potential rap track. We were asking ourselves what it'd be like if the Balamb Garden disciplinary committee (consisting of Raijin, Fujin, and Seifer) would corner Squall and his party somewhere and do a bit of a taunting rap battle, in the vein of those Epic Rap Battles of History some people might remember from earlier YouTube days. Sounded like an interesting and a bit silly, crazy idea, and, of course, that's exactly what's needed to get me on board.

After evaluating the available tracks, we selected the "Victory Fanfare" as something that could potentially work as a 90s-inspired hip-hop/rap track. I quickly laid down some foundation by resampling the original "Fanfare" and chopping it up with some oldskool production techniques (a lot of fun to relearn that) and turned the pretty repetitive remainder of the source track into the backdrop for rap and other vocals.

I already managed to cast Natalie as Fujin, who, apart from uttering angry single syllables in the game, seems to have a hidden talent for some epic Fergie-style vocals. Finding somebody who could write appropriate rap lyrics and perform them was a bit more difficult, but with some help I managed to find Jamey (Numoon), who also did an epic job on performing as Raijin, with just the right amount of taunt and philosophical meandering, ya know? Lastly, Cyril completes the Disciplinary Committee as Seifer, and while his appearance is brief, it does make quite the impact. ;)

Originally, the track featured a resampled and chopped up version of the original game's music, but of course that's not acceptable for an OC ReMix album. I recreated the entire fanfare part and managed to recruit TSori on trumpet and Dewey Newt on trombone to perform the parts and fill out the team. Managed to sneak in a quick guitar and bass recording in I did myself as well to round out the last parts.

Updated because it seems stuck in evaluation. Emunator gave me the feedback from the judges panel so far, and I tried to address it. Mostly did some volume rebalancing, some side chaining, and removing the vinyl plugin from the master that made it lose all the highs. Hope this fares better!

All in all, this was a very interesting track to tackle and I'm really proud of what we've managed to create. Big thanks again to all my collaborators, this track wouldn't exist without you!"

With Dewey Newt and TSori beefing this up with their live brass handling the source melody, the rhythmically altered hip hop beats sound great in between verses, regularly reigniting the arrangement's power & hype. Male vocalist Numoon went the extra level in researching FF8's story and throwing in lots of fanservice namedrops, not to mention he absolutely killed it with his lyrical flow and delivery, so I hope we hear him again in the community for sure! It was also great to hear a new, more LOL-worthy wrinkle in lady vocalist Sirenstar's vocal game. Beyond 90s hip hop, Siren said she was channeling a little of the Natalie Portman Rap, and I learn something new every day. :-D If there was a music video, you could just envision her singing with a bunch of fly girls dancing in the background (or maybe some dancing chocobos). Judge MindWanderer's a tough cookie to impress, yet he sounded the victory fanfare trumpet for Jorito & crew:

"This is easily the most creative, expansive take on Fanfare I've ever heard. The arrangement is a masterpiece."

Encountering silliness delivered with class, judge XPRTNovice's skepticism quickly turned to "yoooooooooo":

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat the shit is this?! Post this immediately. I was so annoyed when I saw that someone remixed fanfare and I was like "what the hell are you going to do with this" and I've never been happier to be wrong in my whole life."

Cheers to being wrong! :-) OH SNAP, stop the fun, Cyril's here -- for an abrupt and effective hard stop at 3:13. We really don't have many ReMixes pull off the sudden finish this adeptly, that's hilarious. A masterwork in creativity while having one's tongue firmly planted in one's cheek. Winning! So much winning!