MTV VMA 2005 Score

MTV VMA 2005 Score is a score that Mike Shinoda and Lil Jon did for the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards. They both wrote and recorded their own music, separately, for the show.

Background

In summer 2005, Mike and Lil Jon were asked to score the MTV Video Music Awards for that year. This was right around when The Rising Tied was being finalized, so Mike had plenty of music left over from those recording sessions. In August 2005, the first announcement was made to the public about the score. Mike commented and said, "The challenge was that they needed variety. I did 10 tracks, a couple of them a lot of Linkin Park fans will recognise the sound, while others are different, all the way down to some really stripped-down hip-hop sounds. And within each piece, there are different parts."

During the awards show, fans immediately noticed two other clips during cuts to a commercial break that had the all too familiar Mike Shinoda sound to them and speculation arose that they were some of the songs from the score that were unreleased. It later turned out that the tracks aired on the show were "Catharsis" and "Teletronic". Four years later when the LP Underground 9 promo video was released, "Catharsis" was included in the video.

"100 Degrees" ended up turning into a full song, the first track on Fort Minor's "We Major" mixtape, released in summer 2005.

Another interesting note, which hasn't been verified, is that a fan reported hearing two of these tracks ("Saturday" and "Hype") on MTV's show Rob & Big in 2010.

Releases

Mike and Lil Jon scoring the VMAs was confirmed on July 25, 2005. On July 30, 2005, Mike posted on the Fort Minor forums, "as many of you have heard, i'm helping to score the MTV VMAs this year. it's very exciting. it's the first time they've done anything like this--usually the show relies entirely on the music from artists' albums. this is not your traditional score, though. i made about 10 original short pieces of music for the show, and they will be popping up at various times. i actually don't know where they're being used yet. there are no vocals, just music--varying from rock to electronic to hip hop. i know there are rumors going around about debuting new FM songs -- i won't be performing at the VMAs. but as you have seen, i am starting to play some shows with the new material, so i hope you all can come down when we're near you..."

Around when the show aired, MTV posted five of Mike's songs on MTV.com for fans to download, called "The Leak."

In response to a January 2010 post on LPLive about unreleased VMA tracks (discussed because of the LPU 9 video), on March 1, 2010, Mike posted on his blog, "Kinda random: in the past few months, a bunch of you were recently talking about the "score" I created for the 2005 MTV VMAs (I did a small selection of beats for the show, and scored it with Lil' Jon, who contributed his own tracks. We did not collaborate on any, FYI. Some of you have already found the tracks on my soundcloud page, but I figured I'd post them here. Enjoy!"

The Soundcloud page said, "These are the beats that made up some of the soundtrack of 2005's MTV VMAs. I scored the show with Lil' Jon. If you rap or sing over one of these beats, make sure to let me know at www.mikeshinoda.com." In this release, fans were treated to new score tracks as well as longer versions of the ones that were released by MTV. The unreleased tracks from the MTV VMA's and LPU 9 videos ("Catharsis" and "Teletronic") were released for the first time.

Mike included his own cover art for the tracks.

However, there was one problem with the music. The first track was labeled "Hive" instead of "100 Degrees," meaning track three was actually missing. Astat at the time added, "Probably "Hive" is the missing track and "100 Degrees" is just mislabeled. The first track was labeled as "100 Degrees" on the VMA The Leak site when the short versions of the original five were posted (which was months before "We Major" came out with the full version of "100 Degrees" with vocals), so I don't see why it would have an alternate title."

The third score track, whether it's called "Hive" or something else, remains unreleased.

These tracks were only released in 128kbps on SoundCloud. The original MTV download of the first 5 songs is also in 128kbps.

"The Leak" Track Listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	100 Degrees	Mike Shinoda	0:48
2	Hype		0:46
3	Saturday		0:50
4	Montreal		0:54
5	Madison		1:03

"The Score" Track Listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	100 Degrees (improperly titled as "Hive")	Mike Shinoda	1:56
2	Teletronic		1:49
3	Catharsis		2:06
4	Saturday		1:34
5	Montreal		1:28
6	Selector		1:27
7	A.15		0:42
8	Hype		1:32
9	Madison		2:20

Personnel

• All songs written and produced by Mike Shinoda

Gallery

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  Cover art by Mike from SoundCloud

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  VMA 2005 Logo

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  VMA 2005 Logo