It's the music that we choose

Well this week’s offerings are two golden instances of musical bricolage that achieve a special frisson by mixing not just generic but racial/cultural matter. What’s whiter than arena rock or C.S. Lewis? And yet both of these honky standbys provide the subject matter for some very intriguing rap.


“Black Elvis.”
“Black Elvis, rock star, walkin down Broadway/Chillin in the project hallway”

Admittedly, no one but Kool Keith could have pulled of the persona of Black Elvis with so much panache. Also known as Dr. Octagon, Mr. Gerbik– “the dangerous 208 year-old Uncle of Dr. Octagon . . . Half-shark, half-man, skin like alligator/ Carrying a dead walrus,” Dr. Dooom – who kills Dr. Octagon on the opening track of First Come, First Served, and most recently, Reverend Tom, this is a man with an expansive enough fantasy life to bridge the gap between the ghetto & Elvis-style white rockstardom. Best line: “Tour bus with the Motley Crue, who gon' stop who?/ Rock star don't need no tattoo.”

"Lazy Sunday"
“It’s the Chronic-/ What?/ -cles of Narnia”

I love hip hop. But you know a genre is ossifying when parody like this is possible. Sure, in employing a form born in the ghetto to celebrate white boy pastimes these guys are taking a page from the Beastie Boys. But it’s the deliberate and clever evocations of gangsta clichés – here applied to buying cupcakes and catching the Sunday matinee of a children’s *fantasy* movie – that make this piece so fine. Best line: "You can call us Aaron Burr by the way we droppin' Hamiltons!"