Track Marks: How Borat Became Today’s Biggest Artist In The World

Brian Raftery | October 20, 2006 3:09 am
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Welcome to another edition of Track Marks, in which your Idolators examine the who-what-whens-why of the latest Internet MP3 sensation. Today’s entry:

Artist: Borat Hometown: Kazakhstan Album: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan soundtrack, out Oct. 31 First online mention (according to searches on The Hype Machine and Elbo.ws): Considering Borat’s long-time reign as an Internet phenom, it’s impossible to determine who first started making his songs available on the Web; the first mention we could find with an MP3 was this Aug. 20th theme-song post on Urban.Log. The Build-Up: I guess I’m floating posted “In My Country There Is Problem” on Sept. 13th; in the weeks that followed, Lil Mike’s Last Known Thoughts & Random Revelations followed up with a post of their one. And in the last two days, both Stereogum and Rewriteable Content put up three Borat tracks. The Dam-Break: It’s actually just about to break now: “Underground” marketing firm Cornerstone has just started servicing the tracks to music bloggers; we only got ours yesterday, but we’re probably down on the list a bit. For now, both “Born To Be Wild” and “In My Country There Is Problem” are on the Hype Machine’s Top 20, but we expect plenty of more Borat bloggamania over the weekend. Odds of Backlash: 4 to 1. But they’ve seriously got get this movie out soon, because it feels like we’ve been reading about it since mid-2004. Are They Worthy?: Yes. We too have problems with transport.

Borat – In My Country There Is A Problem [MP3, link expired] Borat – You Be My Wife [MP3, link expired]

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