Suburban White Fake Rapping Dads Are the Worst
Gangsta rap jokes are almost as old as gangsta rap itself, with seminal hip-hop comedies CB4 and Fear of a Black Hat dropping in 1994. There are probably earlier examples in song; indeed, short of hair metal, few musical genres are more ripe for parody.
Since then gangsta rap gags have not abated, in fact in recent years they've increased exponentially. For every fairly-hilarious example -- say Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" or Jon Lajoie's "Everyday Normal Guy" -- there's an absolute deluge of shit. In fact, check your Facebook feed right now. There's probably a link to a YouTube video of a white suburban man/woman/family posturing and joke-rapping.
Of course, they know they aren't thugs. They're boring, they live safe lives, and the idea of them playing gangsta is absolutely hi-larious. Only, it's not. It's super tired, and increasingly offensive. Here are some of the worst of these videos.
"Dad Life"
Joshua, Andrew, Roman and Adam
"Dad Life" has every cliche of these things, including jorts, minivans, bluetooth headsets, and sandals with socks -- not to mention making it rain and lots of furious arm-crossing. The production value isn't bad and some of the rapping is okay, but that old dude's "mainscape" joke is unconscionable.
The worst part: Ornamental turtles.
"Swagger Wagon"
Brian Huskey and Rachel Drummond
This video was made for Toyota, and is directed by Jody Hill, who did Observe and Report. Thus the production value is extremely high for these types of videos -- there's auto-tune on the song, as well. The rapping is not particularly bad. Overall, "Swagger Wagon" is probably not the kind of thing you want to take to task in a graduate thesis, it's just the sort of thing you never want to see again.
The worst part: The idea that the upper middle class caucasian lifestyle is the most gangster thing imaginable.
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