The future of rap?
New to the Radio Disney incubaTor is Lil' Josh, a 12-year-old rapper who takes the M2M route on the two songs that IParanoid RD streams for an eighth of a second. In "2Young," Lil' Josh informs a potential interested female, "I'm 2 Young for a girlfriend/ But we can be friends." On "I Ain't Into That Yet," he proclaims, "Stayin' up past bedtime playin' video games/ I ain't into that yet/ I got plenty of time not tryin' to grow up to fast, understand?/ I ain't into that yet." Here, then, is a willful rejection of KGOY (particularly fitting acronym for Aly and AJ, though). Lil' Josh comes from a long tradition of Radio Disney support for hip-hop and rap artists. Well, there's this kid, anyway.
Anyway, what is kid-rap? Is it rap by children? Is it rap made for children? Clearly, Lil' Josh is a kid rapper AND kid-rapper. But other subspecies of kid-rap are trickier to define.
WHITE GIRL ANGST-RAP
I suppose "white" isn't totally necessary. But this kind of kid-rap is more of an adolescent speak/sing. Avril Lavigne - "Nobody's Fool"; Katy Rose - "Watching the Rain"; the breakdown in Lindsay Lohan's "That Girl" fits here to a lesser extent, as does Hilary Duff's excursion in "Metamorphosis" (I guess this might be closer to Madonna's spoken word...rap? In "Vogue").
I basically constructed this category for DaHv. However, a recent "Hannah Montana" also involved some embarrassing faux-rap -- except it didn't work because it was supposed to be embarrassing, and therefore wasn't.
MILEY RAPS!
"Doh-dee-doh-dee-doh-dee-doh...word!" ...That's supposed to be embarrassing?? DaHv could work that into a song no sweat. In fact, I think she has. BEEP BOOP BOP BOO DOOT. vvVVVRRTttvvVRRTtVvvvrrt!
Daphne & Celeste are reigning queens of mini-cheerleader brat-rap. I'd be interested to know whether or not Daphne (nee Karen DiConcetto) raps on "I Hate Ann Coulter," featured on GOP Party Monsters, whose original website has mysteriously vanished like so many D&C fansites (except Up Your Butt with a Coconut). Haven't purchased this one yet, but I see it arriving at my doorstep in the near future.
Triple Image have several compelling entries into the WGNR subgenre. "Celebration" is the most fun, but cheeseball duet "Boy Next Door" with Stevie Brock (of the white boy novelty sing-rap school on this track) is the best. No song could be all bad with this opening: "Dear Stevie, I just want you to know..." Best part is gender ambiguity -- someone could certainly write a love letter to Stevie Nicks if so inclined.
"Picture Perfect" (which, duh, could have become "Pixel Perfect" without ANYONE noticing) on the unreleased Huckapoo album has a rap breakdown. (Really just want to mention here that this album is amazing, one of the great marketing tragedies of the 21st century. More on Huckapoo later.) But Huckapoo's best/worst rapping occurs in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," available at Huckaharmony's media section.
And then there's Funn Club covering Tag Team. Whoomp, there it is -- bottom of the novelty barrel. And I LOVE it! (Now if only they'd cover "Sex Beat," which is kind of a rap when you think about it!)
So is Tag Team kid-rap? How about Baha Men? Akon? Eminem?
JUST SHY OF NON-KID CREDIBILITY RAP
Kris Kross were on the front lines of contemporary kid-rap back in the 90s (although my roommate reminded me about Another Bad Creation the other day), no surprise that Jermaine Dupri (who found these kids in a mall...too bad they didn't have a Myspace page) went on to produce...
Bow Wow, who has long courted elusive non-Disney legitimacy, notably by dropping the Lil' from his stage name. But dude, there you are -- on the spinny banner on the RD site. Wait...where'd you go? Replaced by Lil' Romeo, then Lil' Josh (yeah right...how the hell am I going to acquire any of LJ's prude-rap GOLD? I can't even google this kid, any idea how many goddamn LIL JOSH'S there are in the world?? I know like four of them!)
Fatty Koo has been posted here before. Not exactly kid-rap, but in the same family or genus (what was that mnemonic device again? Kara Produces Colossal Origliasso Flop, Goes Solo?). Maybe bubble-rap? Which is why I'm including the KINGS OF KID-RAP (who are, along with Fatty Koo and the V's, exec produced by David Sonenberg these days, in teen pop it's one degree of separation or bust) even though they may not technically count.
Black Eyed Peas bridge a gap between Top 40 novelty rap and kid-rap. So long as the kids are just gettin' "it started" in here. "My Humps" is definitely kid-rap...haven't thought about T&A like that since I was breastfed! For the record, this song gets better every time you play it. And then it gets even better every time you watch the video. Pretty sure I saw "Pump It" in RD rotation, too...BEP have a long and lucrative career ahead of them yet. If no singles are forthcoming, maybe "My Heffalumps (Radio Disney Edit)"?
ODDS AND ENDS
Songs like Skye's "Hypocrite" aren't really classifiable. Actually, most of these songs probably aren't. What kind of influence did the Spice Girls have on the future of kid-rap? How about primarily/exclusively Disney-based kid-rap (Fan_3, B5's "Big Bad Wolf," Ron Stoppable and Rufus' "Naked Mole Rap")? Remember Jordy? What the hell was that?
AARON CARTER
And then there's Aaron. Oh, Aaron. A genre unto himself.
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