Quirk!

First let me just note that DJ Jazzy Jeff has a Vevo channel. This makes me like the world a little bit more. Second, when I was 13, I loved that song. My next door neighbor and I played it all the time, usually on a large but very inexpensive boom box that we put on the edge of the driveway while we competed in our own backyard dunk contests with a Michael Jordan mini-basketball on a goal lowered to 8 feet. There are photos. No one will ever see them.

I bring this song up not because that track has withstood the test of time (though it has, damn it!), but because it demonstrates something of the utmost importance: Macklemore is not new. Now, some of you are old farts like I am, so you may not have heard of Macklemore. He’s a rapper, of a sort, who got famous because of this song (with nearly half a billion YouTube views; if you haven’t heard it, don’t click this, because its little hook will immediately latch itself to your brain, and you will hate me for it; also, it has some f-words in it, at least one of which is not safe for work):

It’s a goofy song about going to the thrift store and buying cheap, old clothes and then going to the club with them on. Every 13-year old in the world loves this song. It is 2013’s “I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson.”

In fact, one of the first things I thought when I heard it (thank you, teenage son) was, “Man, this is some Fresh Prince shit,” and also, “Man, this is like the vanilla version of early Eminem, during the Slim Shady years.” It is just another entry in the long tradition of quirky rap songs, a tradition that goes back to the very beginning of rap. You’ve all heard this one:

Now that one’s stuck in your head. Ha! Anyway, when that song came out in 1979, that’s pretty much what rap was. Somewhere along the line rappers started taking themselves, and life, a bit more seriously, but there has always been a quirky, sometimes silly, usually fun strain in hip hop, even in the darkest moments. That strain has in fact produced some of rap’s biggest hits: think “Hammer Time,” “Jiggy” and “Miami,” “My Name Is,” anything by Shaggy, etc.

So when one of the semi-official narratives that came out of his Grammy win this year was that Mackelmore is something heretofore unseen in the hip hop world, I was like “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?” I mean, in what sense is he new? Is it because he’s white? Well, given its history, the Best Rap Album award might as well be called the Eminem award. Granted, Eminem became serious, but his Slim Shady LP won in 2000 (beating out Nas and The Roots Things Fall Apart, which is one of my favorite hip hop albums ever, just as Macklemore won over Kendrick Lamar). And then there’s Vanilla Ice. Vanilla friggin’ Ice. Or is it because he’s more pop than hip hop? Hammer, don’t hurt ’em! ¡Bienvenido a Miami!

Hell, Macklemore’s not even the only one making quirky but accessible hip hop today. Fans of the NBC sitcom Community may recall a character named Troy Barnes, played by a young comedian named Donald Glover, who was also a writer for 30 Rock. In addition to writing and acting and doing stand up, Glover has also released a couple rap albums under the name Childish Gambino, a name that he got from a Wu-Tang name generator (it gives me “Dubious Masturbatah-X,” which you can feel free to call me from now on). He got his name from a Wu-Tang name generator! Take that, Macklemore, whose Wu-Tang name would be Curly-Haired Slacker!

Lots of bad words in this one, including the n-word. It is not even remotely safe for work.

The song above is a spoof of a whole hell of a lot of contemporary mainstream rap, throwing in just about every one of its tropes and a bunch of references to other artists, none of it meant to be taken seriously. In other words, it’s basically Fresh Prince, the Rated R version. And Gambino has something over Macklemore: he’s a really good rapper (I recommend watching some of his freestyle videos on YouTube, if you’re into that sort of thing).

Most of the bad words taken out of this one, but there is at least one n-word.

 

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Now that we’ve established that Macklemore isn’t a unique phenomenon even today, much less historically, I’ll be honest with you: unless it’s The Fresh Prince, the quirky pop hop can only hold my attention for so long, even when spit by a talented young rapper like Glover/Gambino or Eminem in his prime. But I’ve been listening to the underground version of this strain for as long as I can remember, and there is a bunch of really good stuff just beneath the surface. Like Cleveland’s The Lab Rats:

Or Minneapolis’ Brother Ali (I think I’ve played this song before, but I love it sooo much; it’s should make you smile):

Who, it should be noted, can freestyle his fishin’ ass off (beware, there be salty language herein):

Are you fishin’ kidding me?

Oh, and speaking of guys who can rap their asses off, what about an MC named Swamburger who raps about, well, whatever these are about, with a group called Solillauqists of Sound:

 

Then there’s always Atmosphere, who’ve been hanging around the underground since the 90s, making slightly off-kilter rap like this (with the most adorable rap video ever, and it even has a Brother Ali cameo):

Atmosphere also produced the most adorable rap battle ever:

And they also made this (with a naughty word or two):

OK, OK, I should make a confession here: I wrote this whole post for that song. It has been stuck in my head for weeks, and I needed to exorcise it by sharing it. I mean, I really have been irked about the Macklemore narrative, but I needed that song to get out of my head, so I had to put it in yours. But to feel a little bit less manipulative, I’ll also give you Atmosphere being all 90s alt-rock:

 

So now that we know that Macklemore is not some previously unheard of hip hop phenomenon, and we know that there’s some really quirky underground hip hop that’s worth listening to even if the pop version isn’t your thing, and “Best Day” is on its way to being out of my head, I think I can move on and forget about Macklemore altogether. “I’m gonna pop some tags, only got $20 in my pocket…” AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! OK, maybe forgetting about him is asking too much.