Remember Elroy? Not the Jetson's son, but Elroy from Martin, the mechanic. The one who had the song stuck in his head...' don't you know no good.' I remember the episode when Gina and Pam had to get Martin's car fixed and Pam pressed him for an explanation.
We've all been there, had a song stuck in our head. Sometimes for a few minutes, hours, for some days...for Elroy Preston, 15 years.
My don't ya know no good is La Di Da Di. Now I won't lie, I don't know all the words, but in true Elroy fashion I got one part down pat.
"La di da di, we like to party..."
No lie, it's a dope record on it's own and a perfect example of my previous comments on how hip-hop is a collective. Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew & Ricky D aka Slick Rick made a record that sticks in ya head.
In a good way of course.
Being able to laugh while enjoying a record can strengthen a persons connection to it. Having a connection to the experience the music is about, makes the comedic parts even more hilarious.
The relationship between music and comedy is underrated in my eyes. Specifically in hip-hop these days.
I know we have Wildin Out and Hip-hop Squares, but that only supports hip-hop influencing comedy. My main point here being the influnce comedy has had on hip-hop. It's underrated and almost forgotten in this generation.
I hadn't even thought about it myself until the other day while watching some old episodes of the Def Comedy Jam reboot. I noticed how heavily some of the routines were influenced by hip-hop and it made me think of how comedy has been infused into some dope hip-hop records.
I remembered a meme I saw a few days ago about Ludacris. He released a new video for his single Vitamin D and Twitter, or should I say the new generation on Twitter, went crazy.
After watching the video for myself, I wondered what the big deal was. I mean, this video was nothing compared to his previous ones.
If they thought his abs in Vitamin D were something, they must have never seen his arms in Get Back:
You would think in a world filled with gimmick rappers that purposeful humour would be more appreciated, but it's not.
This generation takes itself way too serious for me. Which is hilarious in it's own right considering how much it lacks individuality.
Going back to my younger days, while watching music videos, I would see certain guys always in the videos, most likely doing the opening scenes. Eventually I began to wonder, 'why he don't ever have a verse?'
At the time I didn't really have an understanding of 'squads', 'teams', 'encourages', etc. The way I saw it, if you were in all the videos, you must've been apart of the group, on the label, a producer, a rapper...something.
The he I'm talking about is Lil Duval. He use to be in soooo many rap videos that I thought he was a rapper. I didn't make the connection until years later.
He wasn't the only one, him, DeRay, and Shawty the comedian were my favorite. If they were in the video that shit was gonna be 🔥in my eyes.
Not only were the videos a favorite of mine, but album skits were too. When I was coming up skits were everything. They were an important part of the album experience. In my mind, a album wasn't dope if it didn't have a few lil skit introductions.
Think about it. Is The College Dropout as dope of an experience when you skip the skits? The same with Ludacris' Word of Mouf. The skits just add another layer of dopeness.
From tv shows to music videos to album skits, comedy and hip-hop go hand in hand with one another.
Even Chris Rock, whose been a part of some of the greatest skits in hip-hop, made a movie with the revelation of his top 5 as a subplot.
And don't get me started on CB4...😩😂😂😂.
Again, the relationship between Hip-hop and comedy is underrated these days. It's like everything that made hip-hop stand out and so dope is being lost.
This is probably why I enjoyed Rick Ross' Rather You Than Me so much. It was a rap album yea, but it made me laugh with the specific intentions of making me laugh.
These new dudes is funny looking, but I never get the joke.
That's just my opinion tho...