Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
As someone who takes great joy in "defending [hip hop's] rainbow-coalition culture from an onslaught of rabidly europhobic listeners," it should come as no surprise that I was underwhelmed by the following song from San Antonio rapper Question?, entitled Dance Like a White Boy:
Question? - Dance Like a Whiteboy
(Windows Media Stream only, unfortunately, though you can also hear it on his MySpace page)
The chorus of "Honkey step once, Honkey step twice" would admittedly be more controversial if it weren't for the fact that Question is white, and sadly the potential for controversy was really the only thing interesting about this one (if T-Pain dancing around in whiteface at the end of last year didn't get people talking, it's unlikely this will). Too bad, because Question's life story is rather interesting; he was raised by a heroin addict, became homeless and eventually joined the military before settling down to raise two children.
So instead of giving us a tale of overcoming the burden of drug addiction, life on the street or perhaps a taste of what it's like to survive a war in Iraq, Question serves up a half-hearted attempt at creating the next Party Like a Rockstar or Crank Dat. It's a curious choice as the lead single for a rapper whose promoters are touting as a great lyricist, and who himself boasts that "A lot of these artists are just copies of what’s currently hot. But I don’t sound like anybody, especially [anyone] out the south."
It will be interesting to see which demographic this appeals to more: the ringtone rap lovers that this is clearly targeted towards, or the white hipsters who will inevitably attempt to dance to this song in the sort of ironic fashion that they're known for. If you belong to either of those groups, you can download his mixtape Xanax over here (to be fair, there are a couple of nice tracks on the mixtape).
For the record, the award for the best song about dancing like a white person still belongs to Epmd:
EPMD - Steve Martin
5/06/2007 07:00:01 PM posted by Fresh