Welcome to another edition of Polls Apart, the Clash barometer of the best and worst facets in music. At ten, the antithesis of cool – the worst perpetrators of musical crimes. At one, the most influential and heroic saviours. Let count down commence!
This month: TOKEN RAPS IN SONGS
10. Band Aid 20 – ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ (Dizzee Rascal)
Just because something is for charity, it doesn’t preclude it from being gash. In fact, the very idea of multi-millionaire rock stars deigning to appear on a project that seeks to get the protalitariat shelling over their cash has always been a little unsavoury. The least they could do is ensure that the final product meets the minimum qualitative standards for self-congratulatory ego wanks. ‘DTKIC’ doesn’t even come close. A simplistic nursery rhyme that seeks to reduce one of the globe’s most vibrant and varied continents into a crass set of patronising stereotypes, ‘DTKIC’ was bad enough in 1984 when its appearance could arguably be justified as a means to culturally articulate the harrowing images emerging from the Ethiopian famine. Yet Bob Geldof evidently thought we needed to hear it again, so re-recorded it not once but fucking twice – raping any vestige of potency it may have engendered only to replace it with familiarity and public indifference. And so we come to Dizzee Rascal, and possibly the worst token rap of all time. Sandwiched between the horrifying spectres of Dido, Bedingfield and Busted, Dizzee Rascal’s inclusion in 2004’s Band Aid 20 was an obvious attempt to detract the yoofs’ attention away from Patron Saint Bono’s Bobcat Goldthwait impression and get them to download the competitively priced ringtone. Instead, it came across as both condescending and sanitised, with Rascal pleading for us to “give a little help to the helpless” as the once ribald grime scene had themselves a collective cry wank at the passing of a once proud genre. Next time we should pay them not to bother…
9. Michael Jackson – ‘Black Or White’ (L.T.B.)
Where the fuck do we start with this then? To briefly recap (and with no pejorative pending), our video finds Michael Jackson proudly proclaiming that it doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white, surrounded by children on a dingy street corner whilst Macaulay Culkin gamely mimes along to a horrifyingly trite rap vocal. All you need now is for Liza Minnelli to enter stage left riding a masturbating chimpanzee, whilst in the foreground Martin Bashir and Princess Diana’s animated corpse dangle a procession of face-mask clad younglings from a fourth-storey window… Now there’s an opening for the 02 shows! But back to the matter in hand, and Jackson’s employment of that most weary of clichés – the random rap. For someone who played such a fundamental role in the galvanisation of mainstream black popular culture, Michael Jackson seemed to be overtly shunning hip-hop and its plethora of aural and visual shorthand. Finally settling on a rap-rock aesthetic roughly half a decade too late, ‘Black Or White’’s L.T.B. rhymes resemble the winning entry of a Blue Peter competition to pen a socially conscious but semantically void paean to race relations. Devoid of wit, imagination or context, Jackson should nonetheless be applauded for somehow managing to shoehorn one of the least gratifying hip-hop interludes upon a song which had already in just three minutes and twenty two seconds effectively provided a greatest hits retrospective of every stereotype and parody within the King of Pop’s oeuvre.
8. Paula Abdul – ‘Opposites Attract’ (MC Skat Cat)
Paula Abdul is rubbish. That’s not some ephemeral opinion; it’s an irrefutable, empirical fact. The burden of proof falls squarely at the feet of her back catalogue – with 1989’s ‘Opposites Attract’ just one exhibit in her litany of gross melodious misconduct. The Abdul apologists out there will claim it represents a bit of fun, wherein our chirpy songstress catalogues a hilarious snapshot of her zany relationship and why, despite their numerous differences, they’re still in love. Awwww. No! Not fucking awwww. In the video her boyfriend is clearly a cat. That’s not some 1970’s slang either; it’s an actual cat wearing a vest, braces and ill-fitting jeans. And what, pray tell, is her feline counterpart called? MC Skat Cat. You heard – MC Skat Cat! As in poo sex. Add to that the bestiality charges and owl-faced Abdul is on very shaky ground before we even get to the rhyming abortion splattered across verse three. About as exciting as the Young Conservatives AGM, ‘Opposites Attract’ takes what was already bad then adds a superfluous rap, which somehow makes it that little bit worse…
7. Texas – ‘Say What You Want’ (Method Man)
Method Man is a member of the Wu Tang Clan. Texas are the musical equivalent of drowning in a swimming pool of cheap white emulsion paint. Put them together and what do you get? Toss – that’s what. With a genesis so twisted you begin to assume it’s all an elaborate rouse from which you have purposefully been excluded, the inclusion of Method Man on this reworking of ‘Say What You Want’ sounds not unlike two stereos playing entirely different records simultaneously at full volume in a deserted abattoir. Taking the notion of a token rap so far beyond its logical conclusion that any vestige of sense is left shamed and bleeding on the floor, both parties must surely have removed all mirrors from their homes lest they catch sight of their profiteering and artistically redundant reflection staring back at them with hollow eyes.
6. Christina Aguilera – ‘Dirrty’ (Redman)
Credibility is hard to come by – especially if you rose to fame gurning like a simpleton on the Disney channel. You could try and earn it by challenging both yourself and your audience with an artistically rich and varied output that seeks to interpret our cultural melee from a fresh perspective. But then that all sounds a bit like hard work… Alternatively, you could just buy in one of those hip-hoppers, absorbing urban cool by osmosis and further reducing one of modern America’s most powerful indigenous art forms to little more than a neutered pop sideshow. It worked for Justin and Britney, so why not Christina? Looking like a walking VD clinic, Aguilera cast off her wholesome image with ‘Dirrty’ – a song whose squalid video revelled in sthenolagnia and featured faux-lyrical outrage that makes Jodie Marsh look like Kiera Knightly. Chuck in the obligatory rap verse courtesy of Redman and you essentially have the nearest thing to a nation-state masturbating furiously whilst looking at a nude photo of themselves.
5. Snap – ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’ (Turbo B)
“I’m as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer…” Not our words, you understand, but those of Snap’s Turbo B – a man with a turn of phrase so revered it would have John Betjeman cursing his lumpen prose. Yet, despite its crass and questionable tone, it nonetheless suited the thoroughly disposable and uniquely European song which provided its parenthesis; representing a token rap that actually justified its quarter inch of vinyl.
4. Deee-Lite – ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ (Q-Tip)
The greatest one hit wonder of all time, Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove Is In The Heart’ seemed to prove (albeit briefly) that musical genres could disregard their boundaries and joyfully seep into a kaleidoscopic groove that adhered to no constraints other than its own worth. Bringing together funk, house, disco, rock and hip-hop, Deee-Lite shit the bed in imitable style with a song that overwhelmed the senses without appearing forced or superfluous. However, just when you think the track must have peaked, the helium baritone of Q-Tip appears through the neon fog to deliver some helium verbals, which give the ear further purchase on the surrounding musical maelstrom and ensure that ‘token rap’ need not be synonymous with ‘fiscally motivated bollocks’.
3. Gallows – ‘Staring At The Rude Boys’ (Lethal Bizzle)
Grime began as a fiercely territorial movement; hemmed into a tiny footprint of East London that perceived geographical location as a defendable badge of honour. Yet, against all odds this acutely parochial genre cast of its E3 shackles and tore straight into the mainstream, launching the likes of Wiley, Plastician and Lethal Bizzle onto the public radar. Alongside Dizzee Rascal’s reprehensible dalliances with Calvin Harris, Lethal Bizzle saw that his output could resonate beyond UMTV given the universal themes of alienation, urban atrophy and materialistic ennui Just as Don Letts united punk and reggae, so Gallows and Bizzle successfully bridged the gap between two subcultures that contrasted aesthetically whilst motivated by the same underground ethic. Utterly at odds with the rest of the song, Bizzle’s snarling diatribe at one minute and fifty seconds juxtaposes itself shamelessly with the Gallows’ ginger clatter and sounds all the better for it.
2. New Order – ‘World In Motion’ (John Barnes)
During the summer of 1990, other than rocking up to school sporting a gingham dress and Perspex stilettos there were few things that guaranteed you a good kicking quite like failing to know each and every word of John Barnes’ ‘World In Motion’ rap. Whilst football and rap may seem unlikely bedfellows, it was a union that just kept on giving – spawning the truly awful ‘Anfield Rap’ and Gazza’s excretal interpretation of ‘Fog On The Tyne’. But then along came Barnes. As well as being a traction midfielder and one of the most stilted pundits ever to grace a television set, John Barnes’ talent triptych extended right into the realms of rapping – coming to the fore on New Order’s soundtrack to Italia ’90. A patchwork of confused metaphors and glottal stops, in isolation Barnes’ wordplay was an abject shambles, but put into the context of that long summer when England almost didn’t bottle it and you have yourself a victory where there should have been nothing but abject defeat. Altogether now; “You’ve got to hold and give, but do it at the right time…”
1. Beyonce – ‘Crazy In Love’ (Jay-Z)
Long after we’re nothing more than dormant Facebook accounts and a pile of grey ash, students will still be chewing each other’s face off down Vodbull to this tune. An instant classic that is both unashamedly populist and bluntly credible, Beyonce should have her mouth sewn shut lest she continues to erode the impact of her creative peak with yet another saccharine and moribund ballad. But we digress. What ‘Crazy In Love’ really represents is the token rap as structural necessity – ensuring that anyone listening to the song is left in no doubt that what you are hearing is very much a product of the time. Here you have Beyonce and Jay Z (a duo in the biblical sense as well as MCPS registration) electrocuting the weary corpse of corporate crossover and raising forth a throbbing dance monster that doesn’t have a second of extraneous chaf. And if all that weren’t reason enough to don your hot pants and fur jacket combo, Mr. Z even slings in a reference to Tony Soprano for extra kudos. Consider us erect in salute!
Words by Adam Park
