• Posted November 7th, 2008 at 23:00 EDT by
• 41 Comments

[Winners announced: Blackhawk375 and hesmanes. Both winners need to email me at dave.wales [@] psu dot com in order to supply me with your address. Both of you have won a copy of FIFA 2009 bundled with a 'DELUX' Copy of the Chromeo album. If I do not hear from you within one week, your prize will be defaulted to the next random winner.]

----------

Welcome to the second installment of Beyond the Game. Last time, I took you out of this world and into the orbit of Jupiter One and Burnout Paradise. We not only got to look into the music behind the title, but two of our lucky readers took home copies of Burnout Paradise and Jupiter One’s album.

This time, I sat down to talk with P-Thugg, who is half of the electrofunk sensation known as Chromeo. There is something you need to know about Chromeo though before I go on, because I honestly feel everyone should know this: P-Thugg and Dave 1 claim to be "the only successful Arab/Jewish collaboration since the beginning of time.” I know what you’re thinking: “How could this be?” The two have been friends since childhood. Now they’ve taken their act on the road and are willing to go beyond the game with us today.

Chromeo is more than just an unlikely duo, however; they also feature slick synthetics, talk box brilliance, funky electronic sounds, out of this world lyrics, and strong musical influence from the talk box God himself, Roger Troutman. When I sat down to discuss the music and gaming industry with P-Thugg, we both made it a priority to discuss the things that matter most. From Taco Bell to early gaming achievements, we cover it all.

The biggest advantage of being featured in a title like FIFA 09 is the worldwide recognition that comes with a game of that magnitude. As many of you should know, FIFA is one of the highest purchased titles each successive year, partly because soccer/football has always been considered "the world’s sport." What type of effect does that have on a musical group like Chromeo?

“It has had a great effect on me, personally, and has actually put me onto the game. I wasn’t playing many sports videogames until that point. When they put us in FIFA 09, I realized how much I liked playing soccer videogames. It’s hard to gauge what it did for Chromeo, but it obviously opened up a lot of people to our sound. It was also really cool to get calls from our family members who play the game and heard our music while playing.”

It’s great that both artists and gamers can be introduced to something new through the medium of videogames. The videogame industry likely rivals the music industry itself in artist exposure, which is rather ironic. How often do you hear a song on a game you play and get the itch to find out more about it? I know it has happened to me a significant number of times. With my interest sufficiently piqued, I asked P-Thugg if he saw the industry as a bridge from an artist's perspective.

“Not until about three years ago. Playing Nintendo, it wasn’t exactly easy to get music exposure. However, now that I’ve gotten back into the mix of gaming, especially through Grand Theft Auto and Guitar Hero, I started noticing how big of an impact this industry can have for our music careers. Guitar Hero pulled me back into gaming specifically. I’m currently stuck on hard mode and it’s a $%@$% to move up to expert because of that damn fifth button, but I’ll work my way up there eventually. I also love to play NBA Live 09, that’s my favorite game.”

With P-Thugg's new found love for videogames (and the music within therein), I thought it would be cool to know what titles he’d like to see Chromeo’s tunes featured in most.

“Guitar Hero and Rock Band are probably the two coolest games we’d want to be featured in. We’ve already done a Grand Theft Auto tune, but that was like one song out of a hundred. Being Canadian, hockey games would be amazing to take part ... (continued on next page)