Last weekend was a big deal for the UK hip-hop community: 50 Cent and Eminem (and D12) were in the country inviting their Milton Keynes audience to lose themselves in the music. Unknown to the mighty duo (and D12), the music was already lost that weekend, and it would have taken more than a bulletproof vest to keep it alive.
The assassin? Poet laureate Andrew Motion, who marked Prince William's 21st birthday with a pair of poems. First off he'd written Will a sonnet, and put his name upon it. But then... well, then there was the "rap". Shorty was nowhere to be seen, and there was nothing about drinking Bacardi. As the point where grouse shooting and crap raps collide, the sole upside was that at least now Madonna was in good company.
The poet laureate going hip-hop is like Mel C going punk - except without quite so many flying bottles. Even so, within hours of the rap being published, an online petition was launched demanding, with a rather sinister turn of phrase, that Motion "be removed".
The whole sorry shambles (and we quote: "Better stand back, here's an age attack") is as excruciatingly Cool Dad as the infamous rave episode of Inspector Morse, yet it's nothing to do with the fact that Motion is a middle-aged, middle class, middle England white boy. After all, Tim Westwood's done all right for himself. In fact, whack an "MC" in front of it and Motion may be the perfect hip-hop name.
The factor which will prevent MC Motion being sprayed in 20ft letters across the Buck House gates is not that he attempted the rap, but that it is so toe-curlingly off-the-mark, that instead of putting William - and the royal family - in some sort of modern context, it's more like a trap door beneath William on the gallows of cool, with Motion being forced to yank the lever.
(That's before you get to a Sneddonesque set of rhymes which manage to set "crown" with "gone", and a fluctuating metre which even Alesha from Mis-Teeq would have trouble making scan.)
In fairness, it must be tricky being a royal poetry gimp. At least when, say, Pharrell Williams gets a call from down-the-dumper stars requiring a musical facelift, he can blame Chad if it all goes wrong. Even Simon Fuller's pop star laureate, Cathy Dennis, has allowed her sister onto the scene, meaning that the "Dennis" on recent S Club 8 output is actually Georgie Dennis, no doubt heralding a hilarious Mrs Doubtfire style escapade at the next S Club party.
Motion can't delegate his work to more appropriate candidates like Talib Kweli (a poetic musician) or Benjamin Zephaniah (a musical poet). The result is that Motion has unintentionally highlighted the royal family's anachronistic position in 21st-century Britain with something which isn't a poem and isn't a rap, but which manages to utterly undermine both equally valid art forms - art forms which, in less contrived circumstances, do a pretty good job of overlapping of their own accord.
Next time, perhaps they should leave the modern poetry to real modern poets. Maybe Eminem has a window in his diary for Harry's 21st.
