This went ’round the InterWeb a while ago, but as usual, I’m late to the party 
If you’ve always wondered what those rappers in freestyle rap battles are rapping about, here’s the plain English translation: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
CourtC777
OMG. That was amazing. Did this person translate more into plain English? Awesome. The other week, I read aloud Mindless Self Indulgence lyrics to my boyfriend. Greatly hilarious.
Yo
Why would you have to translate this into “plain english”? It’s part of the fabric of American life and shouldn’t be classified as something different and outcast.
Martha Allen
“Why would you have to translate this into “plain english”? It’s part of the fabric of American life and shouldn’t be classified as something different and outcast.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA
MrEpilepsy
I’m wondering why 20th and 21st century rappers (and singers) like to emphasize the squalid conditions of their upbringing. Did we have bards waxing lyrical about their horrible homelands in the past?
How old is the idea of “street cred” anyway?
“Many are the men who may testify to the dire conditions of my upbringing. Mine was a youth spent in the most splendid wretchedness. Behold my authenticity!”
Kiryn
@Yo: Where does it say that it -had- to be translated into plain English? It’s just like those dubs of old Chinese movies.
MoonCake
holy crap that was hilarious!
@courtc777– i can only imagine spoken-word MSI lyrics. ellen degeres said the lyrics of her first known-by-heart song by salt-n-peppa on one of her comedy DVDs and it’s HILARIOUS because it doesn’t make any sense, yet, it’s probably the most known salt-n-peppa song out there.
language sure is a funny thing, isn’t it?
Lauren
Is this the guy who did the cats & engineers video? He sounds the same.
Thomas
And I am lucky enough to live in a city with paltry enough living conditions to support such artists’ upbringings.
JdF
this has to be the most offensive thing i have ever seen Neatorama post! leave the inclusive deprecation to stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.for all the factoid intelligence that you post, i expect alot better than a post dedicated to this witless championing of white bread delivery trying to harness the EQUAL if not more poetically graceful form the ghetto talks. no more of this dodgy racism, i know you can know better.
JivesTheButler
@JdF You are either being perfectly on-point, witty, and ironic, or offended and British.
Either way, you are hilarious.
wifi918
Haha. I loved it!
And, to JdF:
Despite your use of words like “dodgy”, and “deprecation” to make your argument sound more intelligent, your claim has no backing. The English language is not a “white” language. Speaking the language properly, by using correct grammar and pronunciation, does make a person more “white”. I think it’s a bit of a stretch to accuse the makers of the video of being racist merely because they find it amusing to translate slang into formal English.
I am not trying to insult rappers, but please explain to me how a song about having sex with another person’s mother is MORE poetic than poetry written in formal English.
-Nicole
wifi918
to edit: I meant to say that using proper grammer and pronunciation does NOT make a person more white.
My apologies!!
alar
hmm…i mean…correct grammar does not make a poem less poetic but neither does using a non correct form. languages live. and if some people are snobbish enough to denie the value of a living language, then its their loss.
boom bap
It’s a common view of ignorant people that hip hop music can’t be intellectual.
When was the last time you heard a musical artist of any other genre deliver a message like this in their songs:
“I’m convinced now that more then truth is at stake
Where people create language that pretends to communicate
Euphemisms are misunderstood as mistakes
but its a bi-product of the ghetto music we make
From an extroverted point of view I think its too late
Hip Hop has never been the same since ’88
Since it became a lucrative profession there’s a misconception
that a movement in any direction is progression
Even though of the potency of it lessens
big money industries writing checks to suppress the question
And nobody gives a fuck no more, no one goes to the book store
ever since the confluence of Moore’s Law”
That excerpt is from the 10-minute magnum opus, Poet Laureate II. In the same song, the emcee (Canibus) rhymes about the Scottish philosopher David Hume, evolutionary biology, and theories that extend Einstein’s theory of relativity into five dimensional space-time.
The same rapper opens another song talking about remote viewing the geoglyphs on the Peruvian pompa.
Then you have acts like Lost Children of Babylon, who have done entire tracks dedicated to concepts like the ancient Egyptian Duat and the Orion Correlation Theory. Or Immortal Technique, whose song “Peruvian Cocaine” says more about the war on drugs than 10,000 hours of cable news could ever hope.
So, yeah: Go ahead and remain ignorant if you want, but hip hop is much more than what’s on the radio.
Gnarls
Boom bap, you said it well. It’s nice to see someone champion truly poetic, intelligent hip-hop. Brother Ali is another act that excels at this, as well as Sage Francis, Aesop Rock, and countless others.
Of course, they’re not mainstream, but most of us can attest to the fact that tons of amazing music is not being played on the radio. That’s another subject entirely…
We, as people, tend to generalize all too often, and by doing so, we miss out on wonderful things that fall outside the norm. It would be like saying, “Rock and roll sucks!” because of Nickelback. Yes, Nickelback sucks, but not all rock & roll does.
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