The Fat Possum label has always looked for ways to sell the music made by its stable of old Mississippi musicians from the hill country and the Delta. After throwing remix cuts into albums by Asie Payton and Paul Jones several years ago, the label hit paydirt with Come On In, a 1998 teaming of R. L. Burnside, the master of one-chord hill-country stomp, with various remixers. That album became Fat Possum's best seller. But New Beats From the Delta is the real thing.

This time around, Atlanta remix artists Organized Noize (Outkast, Goodie Mob) and Big Oomp, and Memphis newcomers Go-Gittas and John Shriver, build hip-hop numbers upon tracks by the likes of Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, Asie Payton, Johnny Farmer, and CeDell Davis. Psychedelic organ and synth, stuttering drum machines, and wailing divas frame new lyrics from the remixers, delivered in strong, young black voices. The results transform samples of bluesmen into ancient bedrock for modern fare and illuminate the common African and rhythmic roots of blues and hip-hop.

Although all these tracks win by mixing the soul and sound of blues with the edge of street-wise music, the best are Organized Noize's two takes on Farmer's cover of Delta original Son House's "Death Letter." Here, the internal battle between good and evil and the omnipresent threat of retribution -- a blues theme from the earliest days of recording -- moves from the plantation to the ghetto, and endures. As it always will, because the strongest beat is from the heart.