Elvis Costello & The Roots – “Cinco Minutos Con Vos (Karriem Riggins Remix)”

Elvis Costello & The Roots – “Cinco Minutos Con Vos (Karriem Riggins Remix)”

Jazz drummer/hip-hop producer/occasional rapper Karriem Riggins released his 34 track album Alone/Together last year, and it is arguably one of the most memorable instrumental records of 2012. Riggins has produced for the Roots in the past, so it’s no surprise that he is featured on five of the seven tracks of the Black Friday Record Store Day exclusive EP Wise Up: Thought-Remixes & Reworks. The EP is a companion to Wise Up Ghost, the collaboration between Elvis Costello and the Roots that was released early this year. “Cinco Minutos Con Vos” is deceptively overwhelming at first listen — Costello croons the opening verses in English, and guest vocalist La Marisoul’s husky voice dips into Spanish, before the track ends in a harmonic call-and-response. It’s an undeniably gorgeous love song, but like on the rest of the record, Tariq Trotter (bka Black Thought) is notoriously absent.

But Riggins features Black Thought on his remix of “Cinco Minutos Con Vos” and shatters the original track’s ornamental wah-wah guitar and horn arrangements. The remix does use some of Costello and La Marisoul’s harmonies as a motif that guides the track, but Black Thought’s rhymes cut through the minimally re-produced beat with his own brand of equally cautious and propulsive wordplay. Riggins’ pointed tinkering transforms “Cinco Minutos Con Vos” into something completely new. Listen and watch the lyric video below.

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