SNL's New Rap Parodies Tell the Same Old Joke - The shov’s been linking trending topics in the news with trending songs in hip-hop. Why do the results feel staler than Weird Al?

[Ubiquitous]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been a fake hip-hop icon since at least
2013, when the nickname Notorious RBG went viral, thereby finally
informing the venerated justice of the existence of Biggie Smalls.
But she didn't get her big-budget debut single until this past
weekend. "Supreme Court's a boys' club, she holds it down, no cares
given," rapped a shirtless, chain-wearing Chris Redd on Saturday
Night Live, while Kate McKinnon's imitation Ginsburg shook up a beer
from the bench. "Who else got six movies about 'em who's still
livin'?"

The song's the latest in a resurgent SNL genre: hip-hop parody. The
past two seasons have brought "Permission," a rap about consent;
"Trees,"a rap about trees; "Friendos," a rap about therapy; "Tucci
Gang," a rap about Stanley Tucci; and "Rap Song," a rap about there
being too many rappers. There've also been musical skits involving
Nicki Minaj (joining Tina Fey in a tribute to the soft rockers Haim)
and Cardi B (meeting the superfan Aidy Bryant). Some of these songs
aired on TV and some went straight to YouTube; many feature Redd, a
writer/actor, and the actor Pete Davidson, who in real life record
as the Gooney Tunes. Almost every one of the parodies, on some
level, told the same joke.

https://youtu.be/e6e_rGWbFqs

Again and again: A person (often white) or subject matter (usually
nerdy) goes unexpectedly _hard_, meeting with the aggression,
swagger, and raunch of rap. Sometimes it's rowdy emcees who reveal a
sensitive side, as when the "Friendos"-three guys in dreadlock wigs
who closely resemble Migos-spill their feelings to a shrink.
Sometimes there's a workaday dweeb powering up, as when the timid
Bryant starts okurring like Cardi B. The subtext is that rap as it's
typically known isn't a place for wonkiness, vulnerability, or
acclaimed character actors, except in jokes.

This is, of course, the go-to punch line about hip-hop. Weird Al
spelled it out when he swapped the guns and racist cops of
Chamillionaire's "Ridin'" for fanny packs and Star Trek shout-outs
in the helpfully titled "White & Nerdy." The same routine underlies
the career of the nebbish Lil Dicky, whose biggest hit imagines him
switching bodies with Chris Brown. SNL and the Lonely Island mined
similar territory to huge success in the early 2000s, starting with
Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell's trip to see the Chronic(what!)cles
of Narnia. The show's recent dive back in to hip-hop parody comes as
rap continues to emerge as the center of pop culture-but it still
presents the music as hilariously outside the (heavy on the air
quotes) "normal world."


Still, there's a specificity, a nowness, to the recent parodies.
That might be thanks to the stars: Redd wanted to be a rapper before
he was a comedian, and Davidson always comes off like a sentient
meme. The "RBG" song riffs on "Live SheckWes Die SheckWes," a
trending dirge-slash-banger by a 20-year-old rapper who himself
seems pretty funny. The "Tucci Gang" skit is a shot-by-shot remake
of the video for Lil Pump's "Gucci Gang," another viral delight that
is almost post-language in its appeal. You might expect a show as
middlebrow as SNL to reach for artists who are more recognizable
across generations, but instead it's going for what kids today
actually listen to.

https://youtu.be/Aw5NG580rBk

The thirst for relevance goes beyond the song choices. The Lonely
Island had fun with the absurd, but SNL's recent works scan the
headlines for serious meaning. "Music is always a way to sneak some
good information into people's ears, even if they don't want to hear
it," Redd told Vulture. "RBG" thus tries to be a crash course in
RBG's importance ("For those who care to know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
is a noted figure in the Supreme Court Justice system," explains
HotNewHipHop). "Trees" has info about ways to help the environment
(Al Gore tweeted it out). "Permission" can be taken as, per
Refinery29's write-up, "the woke rap we want to see." This is all,
obviously, very corny: Schoolhouse Rock! with Davidson as the stoned
student, unable to name an RBG decision and taking trees to mean
marijuana.

https://youtu.be/wRTkhEFCzxY

Currency, comedy, and conscience can often be at odds in these
sketches. Take one of the stronger bits, "Friendos," which drew on
something that's in the air in the culture: mental health. Jay-Z,
Kanye West, and Vince Staples have rapped about going to therapy,
striking against the stigma of discussing topics like depression.
And so that fact undermines the point of the sketch, which is to ask
how ridiculous it would be if party-obsessed rappers opened up.
Still, Redd (with Kenan Thompson, the guest host Donald Glover, and
the show's other writers) came up with a pretty good subplot-group
dynamics. One rapper vents his Lambo-related resentment. The guy who
does the ad-lib owns up to feeling underappreciated. It's charming
because you can imagine similar antics amid the actual Migos, and
the music itself is a dead-on imitation.

The sketches are, indeed, funniest when they go beyond the basic
conceptual shtick and start commenting on hip-hop itself. Take "Rap
Song," in which Thompson's character Big Chris introduces a featured
rapper, and another, another, another, another . The gag allowed the
writers to have fun with different hip-hop archetypes while also
sending up the larger tendency to overload songs with guest features
(though even this observation is stale in the era of "platinum, no
features"). Another example of successfully extending observations
about the sound of rap to an illogical extreme: when Davidson's
character "Uncle Butt" is unintelligible on "Permission." His
muffling resembles vocal manipulation; it's actually from a lack of
teeth.

https://youtu.be/mAL0wZu4JUg

The most jarring skit-the one that's not _funny_, but _telling_ -was
"Permission": a song about ass, but for the #MeToo era. Thompson and
Redd's duo, the Booty Kings, obey women who turn them down, disavow
the word ho, and wear jewel-encrusted "Time's Up" brooches.
Eventually, Future and Lil Wayne-the actual superstars Future and
Lil Wayne-join in. (Check out Future's nice and slurry pronunciation
of on the hunt for consent.) These two artists have, of course,
built towering careers with lyrics that regularly treat women as
meat. But rather than being the targets of the sketch's satire, they
get to be in on the fun. The implication is that they're not about
to change, and that to do so would make them as incongruous in hip-
hop as RBG is. What a sad punch line, and not just because it's
played out.

--
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.