Catch The Throne: HBO Taps Big Boi, Common, Other Rappers For ‘Game Of Thrones’ Mixtape

As Game of Thrones fans steel themselves for the premier of the hit fantasy show’s fourth season, HBO has tapped Common, Big Boi, and a number of other artists to drop verses for a promotional mixtape for the show. A bit late, that; Ned Stark could totally have benefited from the RZA’s timeless wisdom and protected his neck.

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday carried word of the new mixtape, aptly titled Catch the Throne. (Off Kanye and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne. See what they did there?) In addition to Big Boi and Common, the Game of Thrones mixtape will feature acts like Wale, Daddy Yankee, Bodega Bamz, and several other Latin-music and hip-hop artists waxing lyrical about Westeros. So far as we can tell, rap nerd king Lupe Fiasco does not make an appearance, though he probably raps about dragons and wizards enough already.

The mixtape will consist of 10 songs, and HBO expects to release it on Friday. It was pulled together over the course of a few weeks at Launch Point Records’ studio in New York, where producers took dialogue cuts from Game of Thrones, as well as snippets from its orchestral score, and set them to a beat. Catch the Throne will likely see release this Friday as a free download. As the Journal notes, HBO hasn’t said how much the project cost to put together, though, when it comes to marketing cash cow Game of Thrones, it will probably pay for itself anyway.

Why exactly is HBO turning to rap stars in order to promote Game of Thrones? To hit a certain demographic, of course. “Multicultural” viewers are overrepresented within HBO’s subscriber base, compared to their presence in the wider population, but they’re not watching Game of Thrones as much as HBO would like. Thus, Catch the Throne.

“Our multicultural audiences are a very important part of our subscribers,” said HBO’s Lucinda Martinez, “and we don’t want to take them for granted.”

It may seem like an unusual pairing, rappers and dragons and ice wights and wizards, and the Journal‘s account absolutely paints it as such. True hip-hop heads, though, already know that rappers and geekdom go together like “red” and “wedding,” or like “liquid” and “swords.” They may not be rapping regularly about the Khaleesi and Khal Drogo, but comic, fantasy, sci-fi, kung-fu, and all other manner of geeks are well represented among hip-hop artists. MF DOOM and Danger Mouse recorded a whole album for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, El-P and Aesop Rock casually toss Narnia and Tolkien references into their tracks, and Ghostface Killah calls himself Tony Starks, on an album titled Ironman. And, again, let us not forget: Lupe Fiasco.

That said, Wale and some other artists featured on the Game of Thrones mixtape weren’t fans of the series before being contacted by HBO, but others were. Dancehall-rap performer Magazeen says he watches Game of Thrones DVDs while on tour… but his favorite character is Joffrey Baratheon, so we can’t take him seriously.* Big Boi took the smart route and has been catching up on the books, so he probably knows by now that little Arya Stark is the gulliest of characters. Meanwhile, Common is only caught up through the second season. Not that we’d encourage this sort of vindictiveness, but you could totally spoil Game of Thrones‘ Red Wedding for the Chicago-born rapper if you wanted to get back at him for, say, Electric Circus.

* In Joffrey’s defense, he is the illest king alive. Watch him prove it. He’ll snatch the crown with your head still attached to it. Ask Ned.

Image via Stage 5 TV’s “We are the North (Hodor Remix)”