Photos
And that is two nerds doing an acoustic cover of Soulja Boy. They call themselves Scared of Dinosaurs, and they have made a terrible mistake:
It’s funny, because a lot of those lyrics sound silly coming out of a white person’s mouth! Isn’t rap ridiculous?! To be fair to Scared of Dinosaurs (or is it The Scared of Dinosaurs?), Soulja Boy lyrics sound goofy coming out of anyone’s mouth. Because they are terrible. And obviously, this video fits into a long tradition of “charming” acoustic covers of hip hop songs by the whites. It’s not these guys’s fault that they got confused and thought that was ever a good idea. Let’s all just add our names to this just in case. Cover all fronts. No surrender. (Via DailyWhat.)
 |
 |
Alright, alright, I sign the petiton.
But tell me, what do you think of this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3_TIOfUEudo
Oh shit, that link does’t work, my bad.
Try this one:
http://tinyurl.com/dn59mb
Yooouuuuu…SUCK.
Personally I like this one. You still have to hear the real song, but it’s funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrCCLuG8Rcw
Ooh, I didn’t realize this fell under the fake rap umbrella. Definitely the worst.
Alanis Morrisette’s “Humps” cover was a good example of how this same sort of joke (singing stupid lyrics really earnestly) can work without the minstrel show aspect.
As Gabe seemingly is already aware, this isn’t fake rap. This is evidence of the never-ending (thanks, YouTube) acoustic white person rap/R&B music covering trend. It’s more specific than a person being white and doing an R&B song — as much as I don’t like My Brightest Diamond, for instance, Shara Worden still did a pretty nice job with Bill Withers’s “Use Me.” No, it’s got to be a MODERN rap/R&B song (as in the last 20 years); it often rewrites (or writes) the melody to be way folksier or adult-contempo: and perhaps most importantly it’s got to mock the machismo and/or attitude of the original song by being sung in this style sincerely, or, even worse, fake-sincerely.
I was shocked a couple years ago when that version of “Hey Ya” was making the rounds. That’s not even rap OR R&B– it’s just a pop tune– and yet somehow it also managed to undermine black music in the same way. Grr.
On the last episode of Scrubs (which was terrible, as was the one before it and the one before that) they had the lawyer Ted doing an acoustic cover of Hey Ya during the final minutes of the show where JD narrates how every all came together. And it was terrible and horrible.
I see your acoustic cover, and raise you I Set My Friends on Fire’s grindcore version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZmHPcdMskw
Wheres the grindcore?
people in camera shirts shouldn’t be allowed near the internet.
Barenaked Ladies Jr.
In defense of Scared of Dinosaurs (except for that camera shirt), this doesn’t do any more harm to the black race than the Soulja Boy version does.
Question: Does “The Friendship Song” from the 5th episode of Stella count as “fake rap” or fake rap?
Aside from this video (which I think is pretty entertaining either way) I don’t see what’s wrong with white guys doing hip hop. Or rather, as you said, “the whites.” If you’ve heard of any good white guys doing hip hop, you’d be looking at artists like Noah23, Livestock, Wordburglar, ytcracker, Epic, Ghettosocks, etc., which you clearly missed over while you were listening to your Kanye West and Lil Wayne CDs.
Jenny Owens Young made “Hot In Here” awesome. Look it up.
I was just about to say that! Gabe, I can get behind this for the most part, except that I love this video and need it in my life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwuIIsDjgZg
So sick of this trend.