Music Review: Catch The Throne Mixtape

By Martin Hollis

In its fourth season, Game of Thrones has become an all-conquering behemoth, awaited with baited breath by millions around the world ready to tune into HBO or cheekily pirate it shortly after it airs in order to ravenously devour the sumptuous look, dense plotting, and layered characters.

Most of these millions are, however, Caucasian, with HBO estimating over 75 percent of the show’s viewers being White. There is clearly a market to still be tapped into, despite the runaway success of the program. Hence we now have the latest in a series of pre-season hype-making mix tapes, Catch The Throne. Whilst previous season-priming mixtapes were mixed by the likes of The National or Wilco—shoegazing White indie—this time, HBO has enlisted none other than Big Boi, better known as one half of Outkast, in a blatant attempt to attract Black and Latino viewers with a combination of hip-hop, samples, and quotations from the show.

The result is sporadically brilliant, funny, clever, trivial, and idiotic in equal measure.

Let’s talk good stuff first. In amongst the artists there are clear GoT fans, most notably Dominik Omega, who on “Arya’s Prayer” manages to not only summarize the plight of one of the most put-upon characters in the show, but does it with aggression, a mean and violent beat behind him, mirroring the simmering rage that Arya has built up over the show. The key line “All men must die” punctuates the song pointedly, while the rest plays lyrically with key quotations from the show and Arya’s plotline. It’s powerful, heady stuff, Omega brazenly holding his geek credentials in one hand, beating down challengers with the other, and it is the standout track on the album.

There are other notable mentions. Common’s “The Ladder” utilizes Petyr Baelish’s climactic speech from season three as a backdrop for his own claims of superiority and success, dropping mentions of the Red Wedding, and including some intense orchestral music from the show to underscore the seriousness of his assertions. It’s slightly silly, and turns Baelish’s speech into a somewhat overripe piece of melodrama, but it’s good fun all the same.

Likewise is Wale’s rather brave attempt to use the theme from the show as his backing track on “King Slayer,” seemingly from the perspective of Margaery Tyrell. It’s a ludicrous piece of pomp that doesn’t really quite gel together, but kudos to him for trying and creating something magnificently, endearingly dumb. Big Boi himself drops the mixtape’s opening track, “Mother of Dragons” and it is, to his credit, absolutely scorching (excuse the pun), opening like something from the depths of Kanye West’s Yeezus. Aside from the obligatory mentions to Khaleesi, the Iron Throne, and (once again) the Red Wedding, it’s fairly unconnected, but man, that beat. Plus, anyone who knows Big Boi’s social media presence will raise a smile when he pronounces “fuck the Lannisters.”

There is, however, a sizeable portion of candidates who, for lack of a better term, haven’t done their homework. Step forward Magazeen and Snow tha Product, whose slightly limp “Iron Throne” and “Fire” do nothing really more than name check some of the key ideas from the show—cue much “I will sit atop and be the true king” nonsense. There’s nothing here to really tie the show into the mixtape, and it seems like a bit of a waste given the enthusiasm of some of the other tracks on the album, and diminishes any sense of the album attracting the target audience.

And therein lies the rub. The problem with Game of Thrones‘ imbalance with its target audience lies not within the marketing of the show or the success of this mixtape, but with inherent problems in the source material and the fantasy genre itself. Fantasy has taken real, credible criticism for its racist undertones, with a prevalence of White, English colonial types populating its tales, and despite its budget and masterful storytelling, Game of Thrones does nothing to subvert or transform this; indeed, the final shot of season three may be one of the worst examples of the “white man saved them all” trope, rather than (as intended) an inspirational and uplifting moment.

So where does that leave this mix? As a fun curio, as something that is an interesting experiment in advertising, and a noble attempt by HBO to try to reach out to a more diverse audience. However, the real problem may lie within the show itself rather than any lack of advertising.

The Catch The Throne mixtape was released on March 7 and is available to stream or download from Soundcloud.