Before the remix, yU's 'I Believe', from 2011's The Earn was a laid-back, soulful affair with some Flying Lotus-esque synthesisers meandering above the percussive drums looped the whole way through the track. Fuzzy-headed and angelic, yU's original held true to the more sample-based, layered tunes found on Diamond District's In The Ruff, the album that brought attention to his own lyrical brilliance, the main focus of the song, but the remix ventures into something different entirely.
Oddisee's remix skirts around the standards of remixing: subtle changes in genre, overzealous addition of synths and sound-effects, and the unnecessary need to tack that one Dubstep drumbeat to the back of the track. Instead, adding a new chorus, empowering the accompaniment, reinforcing the focus on belief, and completely redesigning the song's genre gives 'I Believe' a completely new lease of life as a bounding Hip-Hop track complete with instrumental stabs, a prominent drum groove, and bubbling bass lines without losing the angelic fuzzy-headedness of the original.
yU's vocals don't suffer from the new, energetic surroundings either. They remaining as empowered and prominent as they did in the more soulful but less kinetic original. In-fact, Oddisee's raucous background groove gives yU's voice a strength that the horizontal original failed to deliver and, while the original remains faithful to the sound yU is perhaps more comfortable in, Oddisee fine-tunes the empathetic qualities in his voice to give new energy and a stronger belief in belief.
WATCH // yU - 'I Believe' (Oddisee Remix)
Oddisee's remix skirts around the standards of remixing: subtle changes in genre, overzealous addition of synths and sound-effects, and the unnecessary need to tack that one Dubstep drumbeat to the back of the track. Instead, adding a new chorus, empowering the accompaniment, reinforcing the focus on belief, and completely redesigning the song's genre gives 'I Believe' a completely new lease of life as a bounding Hip-Hop track complete with instrumental stabs, a prominent drum groove, and bubbling bass lines without losing the angelic fuzzy-headedness of the original.
WATCH // yU - 'I Believe' (Original)
yU's vocals don't suffer from the new, energetic surroundings either. They remaining as empowered and prominent as they did in the more soulful but less kinetic original. In-fact, Oddisee's raucous background groove gives yU's voice a strength that the horizontal original failed to deliver and, while the original remains faithful to the sound yU is perhaps more comfortable in, Oddisee fine-tunes the empathetic qualities in his voice to give new energy and a stronger belief in belief.
FREE DOWNLOAD // yU - 'I Believe' (Oddisee Remix)




