I put this up on the Soul Sides Facebook page but I decided it deserved its own post. Watching the video, it’s pretty clear this is meant to be a parody of sorts (the Milli Vanilli coif should be your first red flag) but listening to the song, without paying attention to the images, this song sounds like it’d easily fit into a mix of post-jerkin’ tunes and I’ll go one further and say: I’m kind of feeling this (except maybe for the Flynt Flossy’s cameo). It reminds me a lot of the beat for Cali Swag District’s summer hit “Teach Me How to Dougie” and while its percussion isn’t as bangin’ (or should I say smangin’?), the addition of the synthesizer adds a catchy detail.
This also makes me wonder whether the line between “parody” and “genuine” has blurred to the point of being, well, pointless. For example, is this meant to be parody or homage? A little of both?
After all, if you think about one of the first parody raps to go viral in the (then) new youtube age, one of the things that commentators noted is that unlike previous parodies, this sounded close enough to being a half-decent rap song that you could be a hip-hop fan and actually enjoy it aesthetically even if you know it’s not mean to be “serious” (and seriously, in this day and age of hip-hop, wtf does “serious” even mean? Is this serious?
Hip-hop, of course, has had its self-serious era/artists and while I don’t want it to be all-jokey/playful, all the time, there is something refreshing about hip-hop’s sense of humor through the ages, including, apparently, this current moment. Smang away, ya’ll.
chatter