Rapification

Yesterday: the Thursday morning before work dissonance that is the dance class in my theatre (yeah, I said "my"--sue me) with their ginormous boom box blaring the B.A.M.A. version of "Sweet Home Alabama". Meanwhile, through the wall on the other side, I am treated to the band playing "Hello Dolly". Not a pleasant combination of tunes torturing me in between, but far from the worst, trust me. (The Missy Elliott-Christmas/Hannukah songs duels were legendary last year.)

Today: Discussed with a couple folks the annoying "rapification" of so many songs. If something has any merit, or has had any success, there will be some no-talent ready to mumble some generic line that sounds like all other lines and it will be mixed in with the original. Somehow, this is now "their" song. Yeah right.

Using that premise, I could take a print of the Mona Lisa, and draw a moustache on it, and try to sell it. Then I could draw the same moustache on prints of a variety of other works--They wouldn't even need to have faces, since my fans love that reliable moustache. Imagine it hanging in the air over one the Monet's seven hundred different versions of "Water Lillies".

Does that make those works mine? I guess, if doing something relatively talentless and hitchhiking onto something famous confers ownership in our society.

It's this generation's version of the ubiquitous "elevatorization" of songs back in the 70s and 80s. I still shudder when I recall hearing the symphony orchestra version of "Karma Chameleon" playing in Safeway one day.

The rapification, though, doesn't require much skill, or as many people as "elevatorization" did. Just a mixing system and the ability to rhyme a little. Voila--thousands of songs have been raped this way. Some are surprising--"Rock Around the Clock" for instance.

This isn't a racist rant, either. B.A.M.A., who gave the world their own "Sweet Home Alabama", are a couple of white guys, from what I see of their album cover on Last.fm

(I don't think it's actually an album, since all their songs listed are really just one--Sweet Home Alabama.)

I posited that I could come up with the same sort of thing for virtually any song. I offered the example of "The Song that Doesn't End":

This is the song that doesn’t end
Not like life in the hood, I buried all my friends
Yes it goes on and on my friend
My friend, how I miss you my best friend,
I'm cryin' every night, bout how the good times had to end
Some people started singing it not knowing what it was,
Like choirs in heaven, just because, not knowin' what it wuz
And they’ll continue singing it forever just because
Until the day I see your face, I'm prayin
You're in a better place

I'm not sure where the original would be sung and additional line mumbled, but play around on your garage band yourself and figure it out.

Folks--a microphone and a turntable don't make you a musician any more than a library card makes you a writer.

Sorry if you think I drank the hatorade--it just rankles sometimes, is all.