Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
I originally had no intention of tuning in for last night's premier of The (White) Rapper Show on VH1, but I ended up giving it a shot once the outcome of the Florida/Ohio State game seemed inevitable. Not surprisingly, this show continues VH1's legacy of spotlighting the very worst stereotypes in hip hop, a legacy that began a few years ago when the channel sent a camera crew around with ODB to film him picking up welfare checks.
Most recently we've seen Flavor Flav doing his best minstrel routine on The Flavor Of Love and now we've got The White Rapper Show, filled with people who, on the surface at least, seem to be real life caricatures of black people. You've got the down-ass hoodrat Persia throwing the dreaded n-word around like its nothing, the dude who's overly sensitive about racial issues, Jus Rhyme (his catchphrase is, "We got bigger fish to fry, like white supremacy") and the crunk rapper with the ice grill and southern drawl, $hamrock. To be fair, a couple of the rappers on the show turn out to be less shallow than they initially appear. Shamrock, in fact, seems to be about as intelligent and rational as anyone you'll find on a reality show. He of course does not get anywhere near the amount of camera time as the other buffoons on the show, such as John Brown, the self-appointed "King of the 'Burbs" who manages to drop the phrase "Ghetto Revival" into every conversation.
It isn't the stereotypes or even the fact that most of these dudes can't rap worth a damn that bothers me the most about this show, though. My biggest problem with The White Rapper Show is that the whole thing seems very scripted. I'm aware of the fact that most reality shows are influenced by the producers to some extent, but its rarely as obvious as it was during last night's premier. During the audition phase of the show, real-life comedian Miss CKC performed one of the worst freestyles you'll ever hear, rapping about her C-Section. Its very funny if you know that she's in character, but the editing of the show presented it as if this was her real personality. And it seems pretty clear that this is the objective of the producers: to show a group of white people who are trying so hard to emulate what they perceive as being "black." Its disappointing to see MC Serch, a white rapper who had to fight the same stereotype of the wannabe white boy that this show is propagating, get involved with this project.
This morning, I checked out the MySpace pages of the ten rappers that appear on the show (all of their pages seem to have been put together by the same Viacom employee, each with a background image tailored to their persona). The most talented rapper, Dasit, was kicked off the show last night after what seemed like a staged argument with host Serch (here is Dasit's blog entry discussing his dismissal from the show). None of his songs were available for download from his page, so instead here are some tracks from a couple of the other rappers:
John Brown - Dead Serious
G-Child - Hell Yeah
You can find links to the MySpace pages of the rest of the White Rappers over at Vh1. Its interesting that the page name for the links on Vh1's site is "series_characters," because that's essentially what they are: characters, not real people.
1/9/2007 9:03:19 AM posted by Fresh