Oh, for fuck’s sake, people. Not this again.

Above you see the campaign video for Alex Bores, a Cornell sophomore running for student trustee this spring. On the one hand, we have to admit that Alex at least puts one fellow Cornellian  to shame. You may remember Natalie Raps — though hopefully you’ve already purged her from your memory — whose super-grating attempt at the same trick in February made us want to kick a puppy or something. This, at least, is better.

At the same time, though, we’re pretty exasperated by this whole trend — student candidates trying to Rebecca Black their way into office. There’s no even-remotely-legitimate reason for it. And what stings most is how effective the strategy is. NatRaps won her election last month by a wide margin. Same for the brutally unfunny Bowman-Hysen ticket in last year’s Undergraduate Council election at Harvard. (Fast-forward to 3:15 — they may not have been singing, but it was still criminally terrible.) Given such electoral coups, it behooves us to look at the underlying phenomena that enable these brazen “fuck yous” to the democratic process (after the jump!): Read the rest of this entry »

Less than a year after the brutal murder of Yale grad-student Annie Le, popular rapper Jay Jenkins — better known as the alimony-avoiding, Lamborghini-crashing, firearm-flaunting Young Jeezy — has satirized her tragic death, and compared her corpse to drug-money. In his recent song, Illin’, a guest verse from Pusha T (another new Kanye bud) features the following display of lyrical virtuosity/insensitivity:

No amount of record sales could derail this
Stuffing dead prezzies in the wall like
That Yale b-tch

Pretty shocking. Listen for yourself below.

Dead prezzies = $$$, in the colloquial sense. “Stuffing in the wall” refers to how Annie Le’s accused murderer Raymond Clark hid Le’s body: by pushing it into a hollow wall in the basement of the Yale laboratory at which they both worked.

Since the song is pretty horrific, we’re hoping this will fade into the MP3 mists. It would be really sad if, a few years down the line, this was still kicking around as some kind of perverse Annie Le memorial. Especially bad timing for Pusha, who just made it big by backing up Kanye at the VMAs on “Runaway” — a way better track. Come on mainstream hip-hop: we can deal with the drugs, prostitution, violence, horrible role-models, and insecure macho-posturing. But making fun of a murdered young grad student? Really?

Would Hov or Lupe Fiasco (or even Ye himself) pull a move like this? We think not. Get your act together southern rap.

Thank god for Yale radio.  Every year, Yale’s radio station WYBC hosts a “battle of the bands” to determine Yale’s next O-town and the three Spring Fling opening acts.  This year’s selection had one especially surprising act—he’s not your typical college band.  He’s not indie, folky, or even alt-y.  Lars Knudsen (pronounced, according to the artist, Lars Kuh-nood-sen) is a rare breed in Yale’s music scene: a hip hop artist with an active myspace and dope lyrics. For mysterious reasons, Lars never performed at the festival so we were left with Myspace to discover what Lars was all about.

Lars Knudsen’s Myspace is really pretty similar to most hip hop Myspace pages out there—except that in his obligatory sullen picture of him holding headphones wearing a hoodie Lars is also wearing a Yale hat. Well if he’s got pride in the Ivy League, the Ivy League should have pride in his music… right? Just listen to the song “Everyday dreams come true” on his myspace page “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa………… Bitch.  It’s Lars Knudsen.” The beat is a little bit reminiscent of Bed Rock, if Bed Rock was less catchy and if its title could easily have been the title of a disney song or an Oprah initiative.

Apparently he has high hopes to be a super star if he really does believe what he says in his song “Supa High”;

Find me at the top like I’m King of the Hill/ But this is not a cartoon, baby this is real/ Everything we do, we do it to the max/ If you can’t keep up then pussy here’s your tampax

Either that or Lars is pulling some massive joke on Yale’s too-ironic-to-function community.

After the jump more super dope lyrics! And music!

Read the rest of this entry »

For better or for worse, we now live in a world caught in the long, twee shadow of Yale’s tunetastic musical admissions video. Reactions were many, with our personal favorite, Chris Buckley’s: “OMFG.” But after the dust settled, we all dreaded one, awful possibility. In the words of the Yale Dean of Admissions:

I expect that there will be parodies and attempts at imitation.

Well… damn it. Here’s MiddKid, a rap/R&B exploration of granola Middlebury culture:

I’m flyin on the pitch as I catch the snitch
and if you dont play Quidditch, then you’re a bitch

Can we just blame this on Yale again?

Watch out liberalism; after a long hiatus, the Young Cons are back.

Take good rap music. Now remove its lyrical virtuosity, high production values, swaggering badassery, renegade ethos, and just-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. Now add two awkward white guys in suits and sideways caps. Sprinkle in some Dartmouth and cheesy iMovie effects; oh, and don’t forget a remixed Ronald Reagan.

Congratulations; you’ve got the Young Cons, the dorky Dartmouth “rap” duo that sends the right-wing into rapture and Notorious B.I.G. spinning his grave, spitting earnest rhymes in a totally badass quest to spread their Christian Conservative beliefs. Now, Josh “Stiltz” Riddle and David “Serious C” Ruffle’s heavily exploitative videos were never great. (It’s okay though, because the video starts with an obligatory black person.) However, we think you’ll agree that this one takes the cake. The young men practically grind up on a cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan, delivering devastating lyrics like:

Let’s set the record straight, I’m no Mr. Mathers / I rap about politics and stuff that matters.

No disagreement there. And:

To all the young cons there’s no time to retreat / Conservatives are hungry, let’s eat the rhino meat.

These guys are about as awkwardly incongruous as Michael Steele. But ideology aside, only one word springs to mind: lame. Gut-wrenchingly lame. Even for the Ivy League, these guys are white bread.

What we can only assume to be the Young Cons’ next video:

Dartmouth Seniors Tommy Shanahan and Matt Applegate celebrate the induction of new college President Dr. Jim Yong Kim the only way two white guys know how: with gangsta rap.

At least one Cornell student has had his share of angry black people and their musics. In response to rapper T.I.’s behavior at the school’s Slope Day ’07, Cornell Daily Sun blogger Jared Kraminitz reasons that an entire genre should be avoided in selecting Slope Day ’08′s performers:

Rap is out, I think, for fairly obvious reasons. For one, the biggest names (Jigga, ‘Ye, Fiddy – can you tell I’m down with the street?) are pricey. Also, much as I love a little Biggie bumpin’ in the car, live concerts aren’t conducive to rap; the music overwhelms the vocals and then there’s the risk you’ll be verbally abused by the artist or be forced to listen to the sounds of fake gunshots for five minutes.

Tell it like it is, Jared! On top of that, who knows which rapper is even performing when all of those people look the same?

Kraminitz suggests Cornell needs “a group that can manage to play loud but still sound good… something that rocks.” Only one band matches his specific criterium, indie rockers the Hold Steady. Kraminitz praises them for their “rough-and-tumble, Bruce Springsteen-on-steroids sound.”

I’ve seen both the Hold Steady and “‘Ye” live and the former was much, much more dangerous. A lot of beer, a lot of white trash. I’d much rather take the Hold Steady “bumpin’ in my car” and the cruel underworld of major corporate CEO “Jigga” in concert. I wouldn’t throw water bottles at either.

–JIM NEWELL