C.R.E.A.M. (Yamaha DJX Remix) 🔟

Wu-Tang Clan x Money (Style 61)

Song	C.R.E.A.M.	Money (style 61)
Artist	Wu-Tang Clan	Yamaha DJX
Year	1993	1998
BPM	90	90
Part	Acapella	Instrumental

Final Cut

In 1998, Yamaha released a digital keyboard called the DJX. It retailed for $499 and of course, Anthony De Leon purchased one from Guitar Center because he had to have it. The DJX has a ton of voices and advanced percussion kits that most other DAW keyboards in that price range didn’t have. It also has 100 “Styles”, which are custom music tracks pre-programmed by Yamaha. Style #61 is a track called “Money” and the melody is a total knockoff of C.R.E.A.M. by Wu-Tang, as you can clearly hear in the mix.

I was inspired to make this mix after 25 years, since I took my DJX out of storage and realized it had this copy-cat beat! I looked forward to the challenge, as this is my first time manually recording a track from another audio source to create a mashup with.

Yamaha even made it the exact same tempo, 90 BPM, so syncing these tracks up was a breeze.

The DJX track had two variations of the beat, plus an into and outro composition as well as two short transitions (four beats each). The intro is only eight beats, so I looped it four times before dropping the main beat (“Part A”) with the opening verse. I only played “Part B” during the hook, when Method Man jumped in for the chorus, so you can totally hear the changeup after the first verse. This took me about 2-3 hours to fully arrange and master.

I especially enjoy the parts when the beat changes up from Part A to B, or from Part B to A. As mentioned, Yamaha created four-beat transitions when switching Parts. Short and simple, but they add nice flair!

I had to bust out with some special cables to help make this remix happen. Here is the full list of tools I used for this one:

1. Windows 11 HP Laptop
2. Magix ACID Studio 11
3. Nero Video Downloader Ultimate – For the Acapella track
4. RCA-out to USB-in capture dongle – To create a digital recording of the Yamaha DJX track.

Fun Fact: Wu-Tang never published an acapella version of C.R.E.A.M. that featured Method Man singing the hook. The official version only has the two verses, with silent gaps of where the chorus was supposed to be. Like, WTF?? That wasn’t cool back at that time, but the DJ’s had to live with it.

It was only a year ago that advanced audio and AI technology inspired a YouTuber to extract the acapella from the original track! It’s great to be in 2023, as now thousands of acapella’s that never existed can be found or simply created by anyone.