Carlos Santana / Juelz Santana
Hannah Montana / Tony Montana
What’s really good? / What’s really food? / What’s really hood?
Watch the gap / Mind the gap / Fall into the Gaaaaap
Das Racist have been catching a lot of attention off their infectious Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell but they bring a lot more than that to the table. These are two smart, funny brown-skinned dudes who know how to get retarded in more than one sense of the word. I used to marvel at some of the insane language deconstruction in the dub records of Lee “Scratch” Perry and there are some similar oh shit moments in Chicken and Meat (see the video here in the box to the right) only there’s also a flow to the incantations here. Das Racist indulge in a giddy litany of words pairing and then tripling up items and phrases with common last names. And I hope this good experimental shit is part of the future of rap music.
When Victor suddenly breaks into some lines from KRS-One’s Black Cop it’s just part of the pastiche. Then skipping off to a favorite Scratch Perry type trope “I’m gonna buy me a spaceship.” then more wordplay “Space Races. Das Space Racist!” before the return to the KRS quote “Overseer, overseer, overseer-officer-officer-officer. Why you want to put me in a coffin sir?”
Honestly, who knows what to make of this shit but there are some wonderful fragments. It confounds expectations and it’s still a jam.
Come out and see these dudes play this weekend in NYC. They’ll be at the Annex Friday night and at an all ages show Webster Hall on Sunday afternoon. I’ll be at the Friday night show so say what’s up if you come through.
More info and music at their MySpace page.
Bonus Beat 1: Byron points out great excerpt from Voice interview with Das Racist in which the whole street cred question itself is skewered.
Bonus Beat 2: When I first saw this video I decided this was the best shit ever. Then I discovered it was directed by this dude Jordan Fish who once saved the ohword.com domain long before there was a site here by lending me $10. At the time he was a teenager and I was in my mid-20s and already married but lacking the $10 to renew my domain. Salute that man!
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Very cool. I happen to stumble upon your page, just looking for people talking about Taco Bell. My name is Hessie Jones and I work with Taco Bell in Canada. This tune has really captured a lot of attention, and even I have started rapping to it, subconsciously. Nice to see that Das Racist is going places. I’d love to figure out how we can build that same momentum for Taco Bell Canada. Please feel free to email me. Cheers and have a great long weekend!
Didn’t know that story about Jordan Fish, did he post at HHI or PF? This Das Racist stuff is pretty great, definitely appeals to my enjoyment for dumb stuff.
This guy from Taco Bell Canada is kind of a funny fellow: congradulations your a marketing major
test?
some comments need to be approved and some don’t?
He posted at HHI as Jordafi
Weird about the first comment getting flagged as spam especially when it had no links in it.
Maybe it didn’t like the news.google.com url? I dunno…
That wasn’t such a great excerpt. I mean, unless you think it’s an interesting point at this late date that some great rappers had/have middle-class upbringings. So what? I would say that of course street cred matters, but not in the stupid did this person literally grow up in a scary project sense so much as the, let’s say, “could you imagine this person grew up in a scary project” sense.