The trailer for Hearthstone’s latest expansion, Journey to Un’Goro, doesn’t feature anyone bursting into song. This came as a disappointment to many fans, given that the trailers for previous expansions like Mean Streets of Gadgetzan and The League of Explorers included corny but lovable songs. The Journey to Un’Goro trailer has some epic music in the background and a fun monologue, but no one bursts into song—at least, until now.
An enterprising Redditor started up a movement to request that Hearthstone game director Ben Brode record a theme song for the new expansion. After the Reddit thread managed to get over 5K upvotes, Ben Brode tweeted about it ... and then, shockingly, recorded a rap song about the new expansion and uploaded it to his YouTube channel.
His rap is endearingly corny and straightforward, but it’s also impressive in its length and detail. His rhymes may be simplistic, but there’s a lot of effort put in. It’s pretty embarrassing to record a rap song for the internet in the first place, so who am I to dock anyone points for not having better bars? I will say, though, that I was a bit disappointed that the backing track for Ben Brode’s rap didn’t feature any of the orchestral strains from the announcement trailer. I was hoping for more than just a basic beat in the background.
Given that I shouldn’t be dishing it out if I can’t take it, I decided to remix the song from the Journey to Un’Goro trailer myself and rap over it. (Technically, what happened is that my colleague Riley MacLeod dared me to do it, after which point Gita Jackson seconded the dare. I can’t turn down a challenge that insistent!)
Although I love listening to rap, and I’ve even written songs about video games (like this three-song EP I recorded about Metroid), I’ve never actually written a verse myself, let alone recorded one. This is my first attempt, ever, and I did it in two hours, so ... not too shabby, right?
All right. It’s actually pretty embarrassing. But it was also very fun! I challenge all of you record your own Hearthstone raps. If you want to use the backing track that I made to record a verse of your own, feel free to download the backing track I created (without my vocals) from Dropbox here. I’m sure you all can come up with something far more clever than what I did.
Oh, also, you can’t comment on this post unless it’s in rap form. Kidding! ... Or am I?