Stealth absurdity in hip-hop
I like rap music, and I especially like when a rapper slides a really ridiculous line right past me. This is not too hard, because I often don’t pay close attention to the lyrics at first, and even when I do there are more of them per verse than in a rock song, so there are more places to hide something silly.
This is how I was able to listen to Run-DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” dozens of times before noticing the following lyric:
A million dollars in it, cold hundreds of Gs
Enough to buy a boat and matching car with ease
Wait, what? Run wants a matching boat and car? Buying a boat and car is thinking a little small if we’re talking about a million dollars, but this is a matching boat and car. Like a gift set, maybe? I don’t even think that sort of thing is available for purchase.
I’m not even sure how well you can get a car to match a boat, since they are pretty fundamentally different vehicles. You could get the same color, but unless you keep your boat in your driveway they won’t often be in the same place, so I’m not sure anyone will notice. My DS Lite matches my Wii, and I didn’t notice that until I wrote this sentence. Although now that I think of it, if you could get a Mini Cooper boat, I’d buy that set. If I happened upon Santa’s wallet, I mean.
I also like this more convoluted example from Masta Ace and Biz Markie’s “Me and the Biz”:
Cause I’m able to rock a crowd without a cable
Or a Cuban link and… [yo, Lincoln wasn’t Cuban!]
So? I still produce def jams like my name was Ricky Rubin
Some other surreptitiously ridiculous lyrics: Ice Cube’s “makes a man cook ‘em in a pot like gumbo”, Nate Dogg’s “Now they droppin’ and yellin’, it’s a tad bit late”, and the fact that anybody listens to the Streets.