About

Slam Remix (alternely known as X Vs. Quad City DJ's) is a series of remix songs based on the theme song from the 1996 family film Space Jam^[1], originally composed by the Quad City DJ's^[2]. Slam remixes are commonly accompanied by a headshot of former professional basketball player Charles Barkley^[23] superimposed over the head of a certain character related to the song.

Origin

The song "Space Jam" was performed by the Quad City DJ's, a musical group consisting of C.C. Lemonhead (Nathaniel Orange) and Jay Ski (Johnny McGowan), featuring vocal contributions from the singer JeLana LaFleur. The song was released in 1996 with the soundtrack for the eponymous film starring NBA athlete Michael Jordan and the cast of Looney Tunes.

Before the arrival of YouTube, Quad City DJ's “Space Jam” was reportedly associated with a site made by a Something Awful user that was about wrestler Randy Savage, later being morphed into what was presumably a flash on 4chan's early /f/ board.^[12] The earliest existing appearance of a SpaceJam remix used in these circles being on Newgrounds, and stemming from 4chan in November 1st, 2004.^[25] The Space Jam remix that combined it with the chiptune song "Funky Stars" was also later featured on YTMND titled Savageslam, created on April 13th, 2005.^[7]

Spread

Over the course of 2005 and the years afterwards, many YTMND users sampled the Savageslam remix in creating more tributes to Randy Savage, including a NES 8-bit remix^[8] and a megamix^[9] made with 8 different remixes. Other remixes of the original “Space Jam” theme song on YTMND featured various video game soundtracks such as King of Fighters^[10] and popular songs by The Beatles^[11]. In April 2007, YTMND user barf uploaded a mashup version of the Savageslam remix featuring audio clips of Bill Nye, Snoop Dog, and What is Love^[13] by YTMND user barf. Known as "Snoop Nye the Slam Guy"^[14], this instance spawned over 70 derivatives.^[15]

Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden

The "Space Jam" theme began appearing on YouTube when it was placed over the teaser trailer for the freeware role-playing video game Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden^[3] (shown below, left) developed by Tales of Game's Studios.^[4] This mashup was uploaded to YouTube on January 21st, 2007 by YouTuber Druler.^[5] Two years later on May 6th, 2009, YouTuber claude75^[6] uploaded the first musical remix of Shut Up and Jam's boss battle music with the "Space Jam" theme (shown below, right). Afterwards, Charles Barkley became associated with other remixes, usually featuring a photoshopped photo of Charles Barkley on the face of a character related to the song.

The videos, as well as MP3 audio remixes, have been shared on gaming sites like Giant Bomb^[16], IGN^[19] and OGPlanet^[20] as well as anime forum The Colorless^[17] and Tumblr blogs.^{[18] [22]} There are also over 250 remixes hosted on SoundCloud^[21] as of December 20th. The r/comeonandslam subreddit^[24] has also amassed over 1,100 remixes and mash-ups as of August 3rd, 2012.

Notable Examples

Photoshops

Search Interest

Search interest for "Slam Remix" started in December 2005, 8 months after the fist YTMND Slam Remix got created.

External References