Weird Al Interivews No Talent Ass Clown Back in 2003
It’s a few years old, but edited really well, funny too.
Whatever happened to that loser Al was interviewing?
I’m guessing that whole no substance/No talent thing finally caught up with him? Is he hanging out on an island somewhere with Hansen, Vanilla Ice, The Spice Girls and Michael Bolton?
restless — On 7-12-2006 at 10:17 am
Um, Porter, that was a funny video, but as far as that “no substance/no talent” goes, so far in 2006 he’s charted in the top 10, 4 times and in the top 100, 2 more times. Last year he only charted 18 times in the top 100. He’s won an Academy Award, 9 Grammys and has introduced/produced other top Rap acts, which happens to be the dominant music in most of the Western World right now. He’s sold more than 50 million albums. Don’t be such a snob. Weird Al’s funny tho
Porter Venn — On 7-12-2006 at 10:30 am
Restless, Ya and a lot of others have won awards and accolades over the years, including Mili Vanilli, The Spice Girls, The Backdoor Boys and Britanny Spears. I don’t think winning awards is an indicator of talent. The interview while obvously edited by Weird Al, makes a point, the guy (M&M) is more or less a moron who effects an ebonic accent (You know what I’m saying?) to sell records and write crappy rap songs (You know what I’m saying?) that anyone sitting on a toilet for 5 minutes could write (You know what I’m saying?). M&M’s popularity speaks a lot more about the lack of talent in American Music the past 10 or so years and Corpo-Created Crap than anything else. (You know what I’m saying?)
Aaron — On 7-12-2006 at 10:49 am
IMO, yes, Mathers has significantly more talent than the average musician out there today. I have a few of his songs in my MP3 collection. But yea, I agree his sucess is largely a reflection of how much music sucks these days.
restless — On 7-12-2006 at 12:42 pm
Eminem is a different story than those others you mentioned, Porter, but with the possible exception of Milli Vanilli all of those groups (including Michael Bolton) have created and effectively presented finished works that speak to large groups of people. I’m not alone in conisidering some of the raps Marshall Mathers has written to be on par with great poetry. He talks in interviews like a low-class white kid, which is just what he is. But what comes out of his mouth when he raps is much different. It’s provocative, interesting, entertaining, just ask one of his fans: Elton John.
Ya know, you had a similar diatribe 6 months ago about Dylan’s early works (being piped into your local Starbucks at the time)–works that influenced most working musicians in the English language for decades. So, I think you like what you like and that’s it.
You don’t like rap, I can tell that’s obvious, but artists like Em and Dylan are major artists and there are valid reasons why. By the way, the Spice Girls represented Girl Power, didn’t they? Just being albe to successfully put out that kind of image/message takes talent and craft.
Porter Venn — On 7-12-2006 at 1:02 pm
Restless… well.. Yea I don’t like Rap, its the same ole crap. Every month there’s the new BIG One-Hit Wonder Rap Star, last month it was 50 cent, next month it will be 51 cent. And what do most of them rap about? Stupid materialistic crap, or big butts or bling bling. Who cares? Why should I listen to a bunch of faux gangsta’s creating crappier rhymes than a kindergarten kid could do? I’m not saying to compose music you need to be the next Mozart, but comeon already, how many more “Songs” do we need about Bitches putt’n the slickem on someone’s hang-down? I have yet to hear a single rap song that was as creative as the original “Rappers Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang 20 years ago. And with Dylan it’s not his music as much as it is his grating voice, my ears bleed when I hear Dylan.
Megan — On 7-12-2006 at 2:57 pm
1. eminem is “taking a break” from recording and doing shows-more than likely a permanent one, though he has made no public statements as to that fact. he’s begun producing now. he is also far from a one-hit wonder, having one of the most successful recording careers of ANY artist, having several “crossover” hits, and pretty much just making a whole darn lot of cash.
2. eminem is from a very nasty part of Detroit. he is not affecting an ebonics accent, he speaks with the same inflection as everyone else in his neighborhood. perhaps you would prefer him to have an affected southern drawl, like many country singers who are…well, not at all country?
3. Your distaste for rap as a whole clearly outlines your lack of experience with the genre…in fact you sound as ignorant as a bunch of cranky white suburban parents denouncing it. Much of hip hop is/has been original, influential, and outstanding. The commercial success of some artists aside, there is a thriving underground community, and in the current wasteland that is the musical world, many mucisians would do well to take their cue from these political & radical speakers.
Porter Venn — On 7-12-2006 at 3:01 pm
Ok Megan, I’ll bite. How about sending me some MP3’s, or links, to some Rap songs that are not about Ho’s, Gangsta shit, Bling Bling, Butts, Cops, Other Rappers, or the “Hood”.
Porter Venn — On 7-12-2006 at 3:20 pm
Oh and on the whole Ebonic Accent thing, I’m not buying that for a minute. Accents are pretty much in place by the time you are 5 or 6 years old, explain to me how some nerdy Alf-watching kid from the cracker burbs of Detroit ends up sounding like he grew up in Compton unless its affected. It reminds me of the 80’s when Bon Jovi rose to fame, for years when he spoke in public he would use this fake “Rocker” spicolli-like accent, as if he grew up in Rockland USA in New Jersey or some shit. I still remember the day he was on Howard Stern, and Howard told him if he didn’t stop talking with the fake accent he was going to kick him off the show, Remember he had been talking like this for YEARS… After a brief uncomfortable pause… Bon Jovi finally says (In his normal avg white guy voice) “Ok Howard”. And from then on Spicolli was gone, Don’t believe me? Watch how Jon Bon Jovi in some interview somewhere and listen to how he spoke in 1985 compared to now. It’s all BULLSHIT. And so is this M&M Crap. 20 years from now when he’s living on some estate in Santa Barbara they’ll interview him and I’ll bet you anything the Ebonics will be history. You know what I’m saying?
Megan — On 7-12-2006 at 3:34 pm
well, as I don’t generally d/l music from the internet, I may be hard=pressed to do so…but my personal favorite hip-hop group is Spearhead, headed by Michael Franti:
http://www.spearheadvibrations.com/index.html
I also enjoy Mos Def, who hosts the highly acclaimed Def Poetry Jams series:
http://www.mosdefmusic.com/
Talib Kweli, De La Soul, The Roots, Common, Outkast, Fugees(the Score), A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One, N.W.A., Run DMC
Start here, most of this stuff is easy for people to swallow.
Megan — On 7-12-2006 at 3:51 pm
except that he doesn’t live in Santa Barbara, or LA, or Malibu. He stayed in Michigan. Good try, though. And it isn’t a “compton” accent. If you were more in touch with urban communities, you might know that the way people in Detroit sound is as different as say, people from Harlem vs. Atlanta…
While they may have some similatrites, in that they speak Black American English(which is HIGHLY debated, but I personally consider a vernacular-with the caveat that I am in no way a scholar on linguistics, merely an interested party), the slang in use in any given area is easily identifiable with a few minutes of listening.
And at 5 years old, Mr. Mathers live in Kansas City, MO…
Do I sound like I’m from Sacramento to you, Porter?
Porter Venn — On 7-12-2006 at 4:40 pm
So at 5 he lived in KC MO, how did he get his “Detroit Urban Accent” then if it wasn’t something he effected later? As far his accent now, its your typical Rap accent, no geographical boundries anymore, you know what I’m saying? Rap Accent = Triple and Quadruple Negatives that make no sense, redudant use of the same phrase over and over again (you know what I’m saying?), inproper use of past and future tense, singular and plural. While maybe a particular twang might reveal a person coming from what geographical area or another, its all basically the same. And there’s no way in hell this nerdy kid living in KC MO or whatever whitebread shithole suburb in Anytown USA spoke like that at 5 or 6 years of age. And while he may live in Michigan now I doubt he will in 20 years. As to whether or not you sound like your from Sac, to my ear, coming from the East Coast you just sound like your from California.
Aaron — On 7-12-2006 at 4:42 pm
“He stayed in Michigan. Good try, though” - He wrote that he would be in Santa Barbara in twenty years, not right now.
“If you were more in touch with urban communities, you might know that the way people in Detroit sound is as different as say, people from Harlem vs. Atlanta…” - Yea, so what? These accents are largely the same. Are you saying someone from North Carolina doesn’t have a Southern accent because they don’t share the same inflections as someone from Texas? “Good try,” but let’s not change the subject.
Megan — On 7-12-2006 at 5:10 pm
No, I’m saying that someone from New York has a different accent/dialect than someone from Georgia, and that someone from Detroit, Michigan has a different accent/dialect than someone from Los Angeles, California.
I know that Porter said “in 20 years” My point was that Mr. Mathers ahs chosen, in order to maintain the privacy of his daughter and foster daughter, to remain in Mich, and has bought some very fancy nice big houses there, rather than transplant to SoCal.
As to his use of a “rapper accent”, he is a part of the hip-hop community, and as such, he uses the slang/vernacular of said community.
While I do understand the distaste for said usage by the community at large, lambasting a single artist as a poseur, on the supposition that he is white and affecting a false accent is ridiculous.
Black African English comes out of a community that was intentionally culturally isolated, resulting in a group of people who spoke what some refer to as a creole, a mishmosh of Modern American English, Elizabethan English, West African languages, french, and many more.
The resulting “ebonics” are what help the community to stay together in the face of increasing adversity and it is, you are correct, spoken in Black communities all over the country. While Mathers is not, in fact, a black man, he is, in fact, a member of the hip-hop community, who was surrounded by those who ARE african american in his neighborhood, and community, thereby affecting his speech patterns.
and for the record, I had to consciously train myself NOT to use the words “like, anyways, totally, um, and you know”…and I was never fully sucessful. I spent just ten years of my childhood in SoCal, and the rest in Sac and surrounding areas- my first 8 years, in fact…
So if my accent was formed by the time I was 5, where the heck did my like, accent come from, you know?
Porter Venn — On 7-12-2006 at 5:30 pm
Well like I said from an East Coast perspective you are a California girl. As for the difference between Sac and So.Cal… I still dont know the difference. And my point on MM is that he indeed IS a poseur, just as Jon Bon Jovi was when he spoke like Spicolli throughout the 80’s. Am I saying he they both had/have some kinda master fake accent plan? Probably not, I’m sure Jon was part of the Rocker “community” or whatever where everyone spoke that way, just like in the 1930’s and 1940’s in Hollywood everyone spoke with that English-Like Hollywood accent. My whole point is that M&M, from what I’ve read about him, wasn’t raised in by black parents in the African American community, it was later in his teen years that he got into the whole rap thing… long after his real accent was developed. Like Bon Jovi, he took on the accent of his community, its a chameleon kinda thing people will do when they integrate themself into a new group. My whole point is this… when the guy is 50, puttering around the garden with his grandkids, he’s not going to be saying “you know what I’m saying” at the end of every sentence, he’ll probably revert back to however he spoke growing up.
Megan — On 7-13-2006 at 10:08 am
He spent the first 12 years of his life living in Missouri…where people generally speak with a southern accent. Which is markedly like the base accent for Black American Vernacular. Throw in a dash of “you know what I’m saying” and you’ve got yourself “ebonics”. I’d lay odds that in 20 years, he won’t be speaking with the flat accent that only the rich in America affect.
He’ll be using a southern accent, with some detroit flavor, and whether or not he affects the colloquialisms of the Hip-hop community will have to be seen. So long as he is still producing young new artists, he will remain entrenched in the community, and surrounded by other people who speak like him.
Did you check out those other artists?
restless — On 7-13-2006 at 10:11 am
Somehow y’all got on the accent thing. I talk sometimes with a Southern, sometimes New York and sometimes ghetto. That doesn’t make me a phoney. I like the elasticity of American English. It constantly changes, new words new dialects and I like trying them out.
Yeah, we choose to speak in certain dialects and with certain accents but that’s a way of communicating. There’s no reason that we should have to speak in exact cadence with complete grammatically correct sentences and with an accent-neutral voice. That’s silly. Speaking in dialect is a statement. If an artist is doing it, it may be a conscious chooice to communicate in a certain way. Calling that phoney is like calling Russell Crowe’s portrayal of a Gladiator in Rome phoney. It’s an act, but it communicates. To you it communicates phoniness and ignorance, but I agree with Megan, you’re sounding like a scandalized parent. Em communicates to his base and beyond and does it well. He’s an artist.
As for rap, don’t forget the master and most influential rapper of all, Tupac Shakur. Here’s just a small sample of this man’s incandescent work, still vastly influential today, from Brenda’s Got a Baby:
I hear Brenda’s got a baby
But, Brenda’s barely got a brain
A damn shame
Tha girl can hardly spell her name
(That’s not our problem, that’s up ta Brenda’s family)
Well let me show you how it affects our whole community
Now Brenda really never knew her moms and her dad
was a junkie puttin death into his arms, it’s sad
Cause I bet Brenda doesn’t even know
Just cause your in the ghetto doesn’t mean you can’t grow
But oh, that’s a thought, my own revelation
Do whatever it takes to resist the temptation
Brenda got herself a boyfriend
Her boyfriend was her cousin, now lets watch the joy end
She tried to hide her pregnancy, from her family
Who really didn’t care to see, or give a damn if she
Went out and had a church of kids
As long as when the check came they got first dibs
Now Brenda’s belly’s gettin bigger
But no one seems to notice any change in her figure
She’s 12 years old and she’s having a baby
In love with the molester, whos sexin her crazy
And yet and also thinks that he’ll be with her forever
And dreams of a world where the two of them are together,
whatever
He left her and she had the baby solo,
She had it on the bathroom floor and didn’t know so,
She didn’t know, what to throw away and what to keep
She wrapped tha baby up and threw him in a trash heep
I guess she thought she’d get away, wouldn’t hear tha cries
She didn’t realize how much the little baby had her eyes
Now tha baby’s in the trash heep balling
Momma can’t help her, but it hurts to hear her calling
Brenda wants to run away
Momma say,
you makin’ me lose pay,
the social workers here everyday
Now Brenda’s gotta make her own way
Can’t go to her family, they won’t let her stay
No money no babysitter, she couldn’t keep a job
She tried to sell crack, but end up getting robbed
So now what’s next, there ain’t nothin left to sell
So she sees sex as a way of leavin hell
It’s payin the rent, so she really can’t complain
Prostitute, found slain, and Brenda’s her name,
She’s got a baby
Check out the Western and Southern rappers old and new (Dre, Snoop, Nate Dogg, Juvenile, Nelly and many many more).