HBO has enlisted Big Boi, Wale, Common, Daddy Yankee, and more to come together on a Game Of Thrones-themed mixtape. Legend of the project’s existence has been bubbling under for a while, but now there’s some hard information about the tape’s contents floating around. Catch The Throne is expected to hit the Internet on Friday, and it will feature 10 hip-hop and Latin music artists rapping about the fantasy series over the show’s orchestral score and samples of dialogue.
Produced by HBO, the tape was certainly a giant financial undertaking, but the network believes it will pay off in terms of promotion. Lucinda Martinez, HBO’s SVP of multicultural marketing, tells the Wall Street Journal that the network hopes to use the tape to reach out to the show’s “urban, multicultural audience,” ideally bringing more of that demographic into the channel’s subscriber base. The plot was launched after the network realized that a lot of rappers watch the show—like Jamaican born dancehall artist Magazeen, who tells the Journal that his favorite character is Joffrey Baratheon. He also said he likes the show for its “sword-swinging” and “raw” fighting. Meanwhile, Common tells the Journal that he watches GOT for complex characters like Tyrion Lannister, and compared Catch The Throne to mix-tapes produced in the early ’90s by Wu-Tang Clan that were inspired by Shaolin Kung Fu and featured samples from obscure ’70s Chinese action movies.
Game Of Thrones gets about 14.3 million viewers weekly over all media. About 13.2 percent of the show’s viewers are black, while around 9.2 percent are Hispanic. And approximately 76.6 percent of the show’s viewers (and arguably, its characters) are white.