[Video] Rednecks and Rappers

I deleted a post from a couple of years ago regarding the creepy similarities between rednecks and rappers. They both wear their baseball caps backwards, they both sport plumber-butt pants, both have a taste for garish vehicles, they both carry guns, and they are both suspicious and fearful of authority and of outsiders.

It is also true that white people most commonly identify themselves as redneck (most with considerable pride), while rappers are predominantly black and also identify themselves as part of that “Hip-Hop” movement with considerable pride.

And they totally hate each other:

Now, isn’t it amazing that two groups of people that are so much alike but for their skin color and their connection to trailer parks, should feel so alienated and apart that they get suspicious and hateful of the mere mention of one or the other group.

It is time to stop this madness. Now is the time to shake hands and make up. End the silly rivalry between you, and come together to celebrate your similarities, your sameness. You breathe the same air, drink the same water, live on the same small planet, and live in similar levels of poverty.

Here are videos of some rednecks who are willing to bridge the gap between them and their darker-skinned brethren by singing rap tunes:

Ralph the Redneck Rapper advertises his talents on YouTube:

I think this next redneck rapper should only be encountered in broad daylight, and then only after he has had his meds:

And now for the finale, “Free” by Mikel Knight, complete with hoes and cowboy hats:

Crappy Album Covers #223 — More Bodily Functions

FYI, this was an album cover released, according to my reliable informants, during the fifties, and was meant to be a gag album cover with no actual vinyl LP inside. If it did have an LP inside, you would hear the tunes listed on the back cover, which consisted of titles such as “Just Sittin’ and Rockin'”, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”, and “At Last”. It may have been purchased at the same joke shop that sold “Half ashtrays” (for your half-ash friends).  A cardboard insert inside explains the gag.
Well, if you are a CAC fan like I think you are, you probably figured sooner or later I would display the Pooh-Man album 1992 cover “As Funky as I Wanna Be”.  Old jokes, re-told on countless blogs I visited that display this CD cover, consist of banter such as “giving birth to a guy with shades must be painful.” And if you hold the record upside-down, well… then we get really gross.

Lawrence Lee Thomas sings the three sacred topics in the Rap Trinity: money, sex and murder. He knows that no rapper has ever lost a dollar singing about those topics, and he’s going to make a mint and wave it in your face, like a good rapper should.

For all the hoopla, I think all the publicity for his album must be coming from blogs like these. This LP never made it into the Billboard Hot 100, but only just made the R&B charts at #38. That being said, this album was the high water mark for MC Pooh, and as far as I can tell, he has never returned to this level of artistic achievement since.

Crappy Album Covers #30 — RAP! ZAP! POW! BOOM!

With Just-Ice’s 1986 album “Back to the Old School”, we now see who the initial artistic influence was behind the designing of the album covers for the Putumayo collection. All a cover artist would need to do is remove the graffiti and a few of the logos, put smiles on everyone’s faces, and you now have the basic artistic elements for a sterilized, dumbed-down Putumayo album cover. Re-title it something like “Putumayo goes to The Bronx”, and the joke is perfect.

First released in 1986 and re-released in 2005, this CD has been the artistic force behind what is, in the album’s contents, a major influential work in the history of hip-hop music. It is said that by today’s standards, the music is a bit tame, but it wasn’t tame in its day. It’s just that, yeah, the cover could have used some work.

Ode to Devastatin’ Dave by Strider

I give my all for my fans
across the entire nation
From my glasses to my pants
which cut my circulation.
My mullet and my ‘stache
are the marks of a white rapper
Who has to sell more
or my career goes down the crapper.

“Zip Zap Rap”
in the colours of my desk jet
CMYK
are the colours you obey! Sucka!

You know, if it were not for people like Devastatin’ Dave The Turntable Slave (who, by the way, looks like a dead ringer for Weird Al), there would be no fun in making these entries. Look at the color scheme. Yes, they really are the four basic inkjet colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. I would suppose that these must be the colours most recognised and feared by the peeps in his ‘hood!

I Can’t Get Behind “I Can’t Get Behind That”

I Can’t Get Behind That — William Shatner and Henry Rollins
Never charted anywhere

From the album “Has Been” (2004)

See/Hear it here, if you dare. You hear it, but you only can view muppets lip-syncing to the song. You can also get the mp3 and the rest of the album from EMusic. My understanding is that no muppets were hurt in the making of the video or the song. I don’t believe it, though.

What do you get when you place the former Captain of the Starship Enterprise in the same studio with a former frontman for the punk rock group Black Flag?

I don’t know, but whatever it is, I can’t get behind that!

We expect an embarrassing level of tackiness from the likes of Bill Shatner (anyone remember “Transformed Man”?), but no matter how much Henry Rollins and producer Ben Folds try to make this sound cool with manic music arrangements, the result is, well, a tax write-off for them both, because I am not sure of any other uses for it. Adrian Belew is on Guitar, Henry Rollins says in an interview. If anyone recalls, Belew made his name touring with Frank Zappa, then David Bowie, and afterward became a band member in the 1980s re-formation of King Crimson with Robert Fripp at the helm. But mostly you hear the manic percussion instruments, not much guitar. The percussion is something along the style of the Hawaii 5-0 theme.

I heartily agree with certain observations. For example, I believe also that there truly is no modern invention more futile than a leaf blower. And “futile” is an excellent word to describe leaf blowers.

As for some kind of overall rating, Shatner’s work must be rated with stars of a different galaxy, for I have none to offer.

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