White people rapping poorly

Oh yes, this is exactly what you are hoping it is. White people rapping poorly.

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Karlos

There’s only one response to this…

Professor Elemental

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iRTB-FTMdk

“Bring me my Fighting Trousers!”
EH

I deed it mang.
Anonymous

nobody mentioning bad brains???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R17Pit0i-D0
hancocks

There was a black punk band (yes, that’s what I said) in the early ’70s called “Death”, featured on NPR this year. One album, “For The Whole World To See”, maybe seven songs. But they were AWESOME. Never would have guessed. Listen to the album, and you’ll wish they did a lot more. And I’m no punk-rock guy, either…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_%28punk_band%29
mdotstrange

Epic post! I think the first vid is the best- I can’t stop watching it ^_^ It puts Reh Dogg’s “Why must I Cry to shame”
Mister44

If we are coming up with black rockers, don’t forget

RANDY JACKSON

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ya23qm1fYto/Seig5qS1K4I/AAAAAAAAACQ/jk_OHvfcVfw/S1600-R/randy-jackson-1986.jpg

And an obscure player, yet a member of one of my favorite groups, Levi Levi from My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

http://post.queensu.ca/~fletchra/TKK/Graphics/17_levi.jpg
Anonymous

the documentary “Afropunk”. also about blacks (and minorities) in music. there are plenty, PLENTY people of color in “alternative” music. just because you don’t know the bands doesn’t mean they’re not there!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-punk
ackpht

I don’t care for rap, but at least it has a beat. The only music that makes me lunge for the dial is modern jazz.
tamar

Darn it. What video does the image in this post correspond to? I am sure I know one of those girls and I need a closer look.
- BookGuy
  
  It’s the first January 23 posting.
  
  Yeah, I went through and looked. I had to find out if the video was as fascinating as the picture suggests. Sadly, it seems to have been some kind of English project, which kind of ruins the mystique of extreme crapitude. It would have been better if I could have imagined they were shopping it around to labels as a demo.
mdotstrange

Check out this AMAZING duet my friend put together with one of these talented rappers and a singer?? 0_o http://bit.ly/gH0wqH
Drew from Zhrodague

Tell ‘em arm.
road pizza

road pizza in response to xenu: I rest my case. You just proved my point. There is no such thing as good rap. I suppose I should lighten up a bit. What you just did, in just a few minutes, took brains, creativity, and quick thinking. As far as rap goes that was excellent. But in no way could that be considered music, Yours In Peace, Road Pizza.
- oxrs
  
  To think that because you, and a number of like-minded individuals, do not consider rap to be music, you get to decide what is and is not considered music is hubris of an impressive magnitude.
Anonymous

how is Everlast not on this site?
Sekino

Uugh… This brings back memories of some little prick on the bus who was loudly ‘rapping’ AND, the main reason why he angered me so much, talking down to his ‘bitch’ (a.k.a the poor self-loathing girl who kept him as a boyfriend).

When I finally told him to tone it down several notches, he started going on about how ‘we stupid bitches hadn’t grown up in the ‘hood’, and how he had seen it and whatever other rapper wannabe nonsense… I just cracked up laughing. I still have no idea what ‘hood’ he was talking about considering that we were in freaking Ottawa, Canada, that he was an average little sheltered white kid, wearing sneakers that cost a fourth of my rent (purchased by his government-working mommy and daddy) and whose idea of rebellion was haunting the downtown mall while mouthing loud, rude slang to his hapless little girlfriend.

There is a culture and meaning behind rap. But it is way too often hijacked by privileged, untalented, frustrated spoiled brats.
Anonymous

I need a chase no face chaser.

But Watsky is great!
GrrrlRomeo

I was going to send in a song I had uploaded to YouTube by CWA called “Only Straight Girls Wear Dresses.” But I discovered it was removed by YouTube for inappropriate content. I’m guessing by “inappropriate content” then meant “lesbian content.” Boo.

So here’s not the greatest rap song by a trio of white lesbians in 1995. http://grrrlromeo.tumblr.com/post/2932333889/cwa
Headbone

I’m sorry, am I missing something? Is there any other way to rap than poorly?
road pizza

Road Pizza: For shits sake OXRS, I was trying to make peace with XENU. Then you have to come along and put me down. WTF?
- Xenu
  
  For someone who says such silly things, you seem to take yourself far too seriously.
Greg323

Why, internet? Why????
sTmykal

Enh. As a white guy, I can laugh at my own lack of whatever it is that means I can’t do something due to my own genetics. But reverse racism is never really a good thing for social progress. It’s just easy comedy.

As soon as you start down the “White people do this, black people do that”, it gets tired really quickly.
PaulR

White people can rap:

J Roc – It Could Happen To You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urZukvTwvfQ

NSFW, eh.
Mister44

What no mention of The Beastie Boys?

OR Nerdcore artist MC Chris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baRCq3twqww&feature=related

Fan made video – but still a good song. I have one of his CDs and saw him live. He has skills.
oxrs

I couldn’t enjoy this ironically or genuinely. I actually feel that a rapping unicorn chaser is in order.
Brainspore

As Chris Rock noted back in 2001, a white man was formally recognized as the world’s best rapper the same year that a black man was recognized as the world’s best golfer. Anything’s possible.
Berk

This hurt. and not in a good way.

Also, you buggered the link up.
Anonymous

@Ty_MY: No black rockers? Ever heard of Jimi Hendrix?

Though I don’t think that really proves the point, since rock was arguably appropriated by white culture from black culture in the first place.
Daemon

That’s ok. Almost everyone raps poorly.
pidg

WHAT IS THIS I ONLY LIKE COUNTRY MUSIC

WHAT IS THIS

Also, quite a few of them seem to be deliberately bad, so it’s not 100% what I expected.
pidg

However, I am SO glad Speak is in there.

Business.
doingdoing

Ouch, I think i’m gonna start rapping.
freetard

All you wanna be gansters,
drivin’ those wagons
Hangin’ at the high school,
broke but braggin’…

or:

Sprawlin’ on the back of yo daddy’s Honda,
Throwin’ out gang signs like parade candy,
Bitch named Sarah makes you call her Yolanda,
But she can’t rhyme worth shit ’cause she flunked out of all her language arts classes to take some goofy ‘urban pottery’ thing.
irksome

“Westchester County, in the house.”
DSMVWL THS

Speaking of white people rapping poorly, I googled the infamous Icy Hot Stuntaz the other day, and discovered that one of them, Da Flame, now calls himself “B-Shoc” and is a Christian rapper.

Christian rap: last refuge of the wigger.
- Sean Bonner
  
  Holy crap you just made my night with that info.
  - DSMVWL THS
    
    I posted that on Twitter the other day — including my judgment on Christian rap — and since then have been followed by 2 Christian rappers. Apparently they not only lack talent, they also lack any sense of dignity.
donniebnyc

I hate rap, but music is a very broad subject that encompasses many types of artistic expression. It seems incorrect to say rap is not music.

It is fair to say that rap is not singing, though. I think it’s more accurate to call rap reciting or chanting to a rhythm.
Ty_MY

Can white people come up with something cool that the general populace (white and non-white) want to emulate?

I mean, plenty of white hip hop kids.
But I don’t see any black emo or goth kids.
Or even black rockers.
Maybe only a few black cowboys.

Wassup wit.. um, I mean, why is that?

Non-American
- bibulb
  
  Actually, pick up a documentary called “Electric Purgatory”, about the invisibility of black rockers. Kinda awesome flick.
- Anonymous
  
  In NYC the goth scene is about as diverse as the rest of the city. While some minority goths experience discrimination from other members of their ethnic group for being goth, the goth community here is refreshingly color-blind. That’s why we all wear mono-chromatic clothing.
- slamorte
  
  “Can white people come up with something cool that the general populace (white and non-white) want to emulate? But I don’t see any black emo or goth kids. Or even black rockers.”
  
  Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Kravitz, Ray Charles, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Bo Diddly, Ben Harper. I’m not sure of your point, though, since rock has significant black roots, so questions of who is emulating who becomes murky.
  
  Emo: I see color in the Emo culture, particularly Asian and Indian.
  
  Things white people invented that other races sometimes emulate: yuppie culture. Hollywood. Silicon valley.
  
  “Maybe only a few black cowboys.” Perhaps because cowboy culture has traditionally been fairly rural, conservative, Christian, and xenophobic, making it both hard and undesirable for folks with some color to them to join.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Jimi Hendrix, Lenny Kravitz, Ray Charles, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Bo Diddly, Ben Harper.
    
    Other than Hendrix and Kravitz, I wouldn’t really call the rest of those folks “rockers.” To the woefully-short list of what I’d call “rockers who are black,” I’d add Vernon Reid and the rest of the Living Colour guys, and William DuVall, the new frontman for Alice in Chains. Oh, and Darryl Jones, the fella who took Bill Wyman’s place in the Stones but is apparently not considered a real Stone though he’s played on every album and tour for the last 17 years. Also, as a former sideman for Miles Davis, maybe he’s not strictly a “rocker” either.
    
    And off the top of my head, I can’t think of any others. Which is a real bummer to me. Considering the enormous debt that rock and roll owes to blues music, and considering how blown away I’ve been by the few black rockers I’ve encountered in my life, I’ve always wanted to hear more.
    - takeshi
      
      Prince is a rocker. Not all of his songs are rock songs, of course, but his shredding leaves Vernon Reid’s in the dust.
      - Donald Petersen
        
        Prince can shred, no doubt about that. He’s been off my radar for so long I’d forgotten about him entirely, and though I still don’t think of him as a rocker, I know he can kick ass at any number of musical genres.
        
        I’d pay cash money to hear him sit in with, say, Bruce Springsteen. That’d be something.
TheWalbert

Cleanse your palate with this:

http://bit.ly/etI1L9

I did.
Xenu

Oh yes, this is exactly what you are hoping it is.

Yes, I absolutely LOVE 404s! How did you know?
mrsomuch

if you fancy some nice British rap, you can do much worse than these guys

http://theyesmen.bandcamp.com/album/long-live-immortality

heartily recommended!
Anonymous

Actually, bad black rappers are also funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpw6CzprNY
- BDiamond
  
  You know, I tried to watch that video a couple weeks ago. I couldn’t make it even halfway. It seemed to me that the dude on the left may be mentally challenged and the other guys were making fun of him. I hope I’m wrong, but that’s how it struck me. More cruel than funny.
  - TheWalbert
    
    Here’s a somewhat heartening look at the Eli Porter video and the context behind it:
    
    http://vimeo.com/16304114
blurgh

“Yeah, it’s perfectly valid to compare mocking someone’s ability to rap to the systematic dehumanisation and exploitation of Africans brought to America as slaves. Great point you make.”

Unless the kids were Jewish, in which case you’re denigrating the Holocaust and several thousand years of oppression.

And mocking Chinese people is fine, as the overall race has a long history of not being oppressed by Americans.

There have been some great, nuanced posts about cultural dominance and appropriation in this thread. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone else has so effectively combined stupidity and sarcasm as you.
wrybread

Road pizza loses the thread.
Anonymous

“White people rapping badly”, shouldn’t that go without saying?
tw15

The spirit of Ai G lives on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZrJzyh-wM

German Rap is spectacularly bad IMHO, even the more street credible Turkish-German stuff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehqAN1JMaOY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qal2lOTQ_C0&feature=related

However, for some strange reason rap finally seems to make French pop music listenable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzJDeDdVGIM
rebdav

All I know is when I see a cute girl in geeky glasses I feel a little breathless. I could care less if they are rapping.
Anonymous

The exception proves the rule.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6XLswqiX0s
road pizza

There is no such thing as good rapping. Black, White or whatever. I’m sorry but i like my music to sound like music. You know, with a tune and a melody and stuff.
- jfaehnle
  
  How do you feel about Frank Sinatra? He is considered by many to be one of the greatest American musicians of all times. Yet if you listen, you’ll notice that he is pretty much just talking. So why can Ol’ Blue Eyes’ slow flow be loved by so many, but when rappers rap, it doesn’t “sound like music?”
  
  I do not like formulaic action movies with bad CGI and countless non-plot driven explosions and gun battles, but I do not deny that they look like movies.
  
  And clearly, if you have never heard rap with melody or tune (what does that even mean?) you have never really listened to rap. You have heard it, but never listened.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Fine. We’re getting off your lawn right now.
- Xenu
  
  There is no such thing as good rapping. Black, White or whatever. I’m sorry but i like my music to sound like music. You know, with a tune and a melody and stuff.
  
  Road Pizza was a nigga I met back in da hood
  Mothafucka claimed rap could never be good
  My gang an I is one open-minded crew
  But this was one mudda who’s time was through
  We got in da Impalla an’ drove to his place
  Soon all we see is his ugly ass face
  Pizza Man ran but then he done tripped
  Homie G pulled da trigga and unloaded hiz clip
  Harsh fo’ sure but dat foo was incorrect
  Sayin’ rap music don’t deserve no respect
- Brainspore
  
  There is no such thing as good rapping. Black, White or whatever. I’m sorry but i like my music to sound like music. You know, with a tune and a melody and stuff.
  
  There is no such thing as good trolling. Grouchy, Snarky or whatever. I’m sorry but i like my comments to sound like a conversation. You know, with intelligence and civility and stuff.
- jere7my
  
  The woefully underrated Astronautalis handily disproves both the notion that there is no good rap and the notion that there are no good white rappers. (There are many brilliant black rappers; that point doesn’t need to be made by me.) Here’s a video for his song The Trouble Hunters, about the Battle of Trenton, which references John Honeyman and Ben Franklin, which properly uses the word “deracinate”, and which I loved even before I saw the ridiculous low-budget vampire-themed video that goes with it:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGOjoeRq9Ik
  - jere7my
    
    Ha! And, to bring this back toward relevance, I just saw his tweet about the subject of this post:
    
    @astronautalis: checked this frantically to make sure i wasn’t on it: http://whitepeoplerappingpoorly.tumblr.com #iwasnt
Anonymous

@tw15 or spectacularly good for partying:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWsQQgbKkjc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvvTX0bwPo
Baldhead

I love how the very first thing on the site (G- Man) would, from the album cover appear very much to be a black person. Would love to know how that got there. But life is too short for bad rapping
knoxblox

Uff da!
libraryboi

What is the issue here, their rapping ability or their race? The title and linked site seem to suggest that all blacks can rap, that it is an innate characteristic of their skin color.

Of course, make the reverse claim and suggest that blacks are poor at doing something because of their skin color and it wouldn’t get published because it would be considered racist.

We don’t seem to have made any progress because we still make a link between race and ability.
- Michaelchr
  
  Your comment brought this to mind
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jTM4ZOa69U
- Donald Petersen
  
  Nothing so offensive as that. Black people rapping poorly wouldn’t be newsworthy, not because “black people can’t rap,” but because since most rappers are black, a black rapper who wasn’t very good at it would be about as interesting as the seventeen million young white not-quite-Eddie-Van-Halens out there stinkin’ up the Youtube with their weak-ass shredding.
  
  Still, one does have to wonder how well we’d take a post displaying “black men golfing badly,” or “Chinese NASCAR drivers who DNF and/or crash every week.” Maybe you have a point there.
  
  Hmm. Might it be simply because there are so very many white people willing to co-opt another culture’s arts and activities and fail so shamelessly at it?
  
  I bet that’s it.
- Sean Bonner
  
  Obviously I hate white people.
Variable Rush

A long time ago (but not in a galaxy far, far away) I wrote and recorded a rap song about “white suburban middle class oppression” yeah, it turned out as bad as it sounds. Maybe I’ll send the song to this site.
Orizuru

I think there is an element that people conveniently ignore when they point out the role of race in contexts like this. This element is the role of cultural dominance. Simply put, making fun of the dominant race is hardly a form of oppression. The phrase “weapons of the weak” comes to mind. You can make all the jokes you want about white people, but at the end of the day, they still run the country. On the other hand, making jokes about minorities is like kicking them while they are down. It’s just plain cruel.
robulus

Yeah, it’s perfectly valid to compare mocking someone’s ability to rap to the systematic dehumanisation and exploitation of Africans brought to America as slaves. Great point you make. You and libraryboi should get together and cry into your beer some time.
Neon Tooth

There’s a cloud of cultural appropriation and other issues when you deal with the dominant race/culture trying to seriously do (or mock as is the case with a number of the videos) a music that’s traditionally been an art from of the minority culture. In other words I don’t see any ‘double standard’.
ariel

How is it not wrong to imply that people of race x are inherently bad at something, whereas people of race y are inherently good at something?
My problem is not that anyone is hurting white people’s feelings. My problem is with people promoting the idea of how “they” are fundamentally different from “us”, regardless of who is making fun of who.
wormbaby

I have heard that exact argument for explaining why black folks can not be racist. Sorry grouping people together by color then poking fun at them re: said skin color and their inability to do something because they are the wrong color still does not sound kosher to me. But I guess the blue eyed devil has different standards.