Collaboration Week: Day 5. The Collaborators: Gregg Gillis and Hundreds of Artists. The Album: All Day.

Girl Talk can hardly be called “collaborative,” given that it’s just one guy, Gregg Gillis, working alone, compiling samples from hundreds of songs he’s not licensed to sample. However, I couldn’t resist including him here, because in mashing together artists from all ends of the musical spectrum, Gillis acts as a musical cross pollinator, buzzing from genre to genre, decade to decade, answering questions no one knew to ask, like “What would a Ludacris/Black Sabbath collabo sound like?” The first time I heard Girl Talk, he was combining two songs I did know, Biggie’s “Juicy” and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” but a big part of the enjoyment of his music happens unexpectedly, when you hear a song he sampled and realize, “Hey I’ve heard this before …” It’s a light bulb moment of both discovery and familiarity, because even though you may have never heard the whole song before, you already love a piece of it. His latest effort is called All Day, and you can download it for free here. And check out the video above for a few snippets of his recent show in Richmond at the National.