The album title says it all: Glassbreaks. It's a smartly compiled mashup project by DJ BC featuring the piano, orchestral, and operatic works of Philip Glass and hip hop stylings from New York (Beastie Boys), Atlanta (Lil Jon), London (Dizzee), and Chicago (Kanye), among others. I've chosen to share a track that features a more stereotypically Glass work—"Glasspiece #1: Rubric" (from Glassworks), which is here paired with MC Eight's "Geez Make the World Go Round" (from We Come Strapped).

MP3 DJ BC - Gangsta Rubric [Philip Glass vs. MC Eight]

That the two tracks align so perfectly is a testament to the precision with which Glass and Michael Riesman play and lead the Ensemble. Still, there's a wonderful antagonism between 1:00 and 1:40, during which the swing of the hip hop beat (is it live drumming?) lilts maybe just a 64th of a beat ahead of the Glass Ensemble, which remains militantly in tempo. I imagine they're playing to click tracks and stopwatches. I give major props to DJ BC, who has judiciously chosen pairings that reflexively illustrate and exaggerate textual and textural properties of one another. Here, the wild and repetitive arpeggii breathe the hustle into the hood, while the brass chorus transforms every smalltime G's street corner story into an epic. I've never met a "real hip hopper" (to quote Mudede… again, because I like the guy), but I've met Philip Glass twice. The first time was when I was in high school, and my best friend and I drove two hours to see him and his Ensemble perform La Belle et la Bête. Of course, our first experience with him in a live setting was arresting, but it paled in comparison to when he surprised us while we were smoking afterwards by a side entrance to the hall. We shook his hand, exchanged some awkward words, and got his autograph. Some time later, we noted how his signature resembled the name "Andy Men." We've been calling him that for ten years.