The first Nuclear Winter mix came about when Sole became disappointed that every version he heard of “My President” didn’t seem to criticize Obama at all. The decision to record his own version was a launching point for this project, in which he samples current pop/hip hop songs and re-appropriates them as a platform to discuss current events in a critical fashion.

If you’re already familiar with Sole, you probably know about his far left politics (he describes himself as an anarchist). If you’re new to his music and world view, the stage is set at the very beginning, with the tongue-in-cheek song, “I Think I’m Noam Chomsky.” With some tracks, it does confirm for me that I never really cared for the source material, other times it makes me realize that certain song wasn’t that bad in the first place, I just had bad associations with it. One of the most moving tracks on the collection is “Bradley Manning Swag,” which was the starting point for Volume 2, where Sole discusses the implications of how American soldier Bradley Manning, accused of leaking sensitive information through Wikileaks, is being held unfairly. It’s a lot of emotional content and hard thinking about moral issues that I did not have with “Russian Roulette” by Rhianna, a pop song I found bizarre more than anything else. “White Rage/Arizona Goddamn” is a good discussion of race issues over a Clipse beat, discussing issues like the disparity in sentencing amongst minorities, economic policies, and features the cry of “Death to Reagan - whenever he’s resurrected!”. It’s a rallying cry I can certainly get behind. “We Stay Eatin’” with Busdriver uses a James Blake song to discuss the food industry, and how hard it is to eat right, whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, or a meat eater. “D.O.I. (Death of Industry)” with Cadalack Ron and LuckyIAM and “The Long War” lays out some of my favorite analysis of the record industry. He recently discussed this in more detail in his interview with us. You can read it here.

If every artist’s mixtape/project was this involved and given to such deep thinking and emotional involvement from the artist, the whole game would be changed. It’s not such a bizarre concept, but pairing pre-existing pop/hip hop music challenging lyrics is not as common as it should be. Until then, I’ll live with knowing that there will be a Nuclear Winter Volume 3 at some point in the near future.