No intro this week so just enjoy this pic of GZA, RZA, and Bill Murray hanging out instead. Songs down below.
Luka:
Lionel Richie - Hello
My first song is Lionel Richie’s Hello. There’s no point in
me describing how great of a song or how many weeks it spent on the charts
since this is all well-known. Everyone loves this song and with good reason. It
has good lyrics, a good melody, it’s extremely catchy and to top it all off, it
is sung by one of the best singers of all time. The chorus is especially fun to
sing with everyone attempting a seductive “hello” in hope of mimicking Lionel but always end up sounding more like Uncle Leo. The main reason I picked this song
though is its insane/weird video that naturally makes it very fun to watch. The
basic plot of the video is that Lionel is crushing on a girl who is the subject
of the lyrics. Sounds normal right? Yeah, until you figure out that
Lionel is the girl’s teacher. Here are some highlights of the video. :21 – The
name of the fictional character in the video is Billyboy..? Really? They could
have picked anything else and it would have been less weird. :55 – We meet
Lionel’s crush in the video, his student Laura who appears to go to the same
barber as him (they randomly have strangely similar hair). 1:44 – Unrelated but
how fucking old is that guy? 1:55 – No one in this school finds it weird that
the drama teacher is stalking his student in the hallway? Nobody? 2:21 –
Laura’s friends save her from a Lionel sneak-attack from behind. 3:41 –
Creepiest moment of the video (big accomplishment), Lionel calling his student
late at night only to sing “Hello, Is it me you’re looking for?” before hanging
up. 4:34 – One of Lionel’s students (who looks to be the same age as him) tells
him something’s up in the sculpture class. 4:57 – Laura made a sculpture of
Lionel’s head and then begins touching his face. 5:25 – Thank god this video
ends at this moment because if it hadn’t, I’m pretty sure we’d all be witnesses
to a crime. Great song. I’m kind of sad that videos like this don’t get made
anymore.
Ja Rule ft. Jennifer Lopez - I'm Real (Murder Remix)
It was late 2001 and I was just turning 10. What else was
happening at the time? Ja Rule and Jennifer Lopez were releasing this great song.
I don’t know anyone who hears this and doesn’t immediately start having a good
time. It has that laid back summer vibe that just makes you want to put on your
doo-rag and go play ball in the Bronx (or is that just me?). The song has J-Lo
on the chorus as well as trading lyrics back and forth with Ja Rule who was
huge at the time (if you’re young and reading this, you’re just going to have
take my word on this one). The video has Ja and J-Lo (J-Lo is in her full ‘Jenny
from the Block’ persona in this one. Also, how well has she aged? She looks
just as good now as she did back then. Unreal) just lounging in their
neighborhood, in front of a basketball court, and on the hood of a car. A simple
concept for the video but you don’t really need anything too complicated for a
song such as this one. What the video does have is two clothing styles that sadly
disappeared after the early 2000’s. One being the Doo-Rag (pretty sure that’s
how it’s spelt) which every single rapper wore back in the day. These seemingly
all disappeared at once and are now nowhere to be found. I personally blame
Kevin Federline for this. After he starting wearing them in the mid 00’s the
African-American community probably got together and just decided that they had
to go. Thanks K-Fed. The second thing in the video that you never see anymore
is the “one sleeve pulled on, the other on top of the shoulder” style of
wearing your shirt. I blame people’s common sense for that one since I can’t
believe people ever thought that looked good.
