Cue hip-hop beat.
Middle-aged, middle-class, white comedy critic trying to conceal his identity behind sunglasses, backwards baseball cap and extraordinarily large medallion, steps tentatively towards the microphone ...
Straight outta Compton, straight into the Pleasance
Writing an article, trying to make sense
Of all the young white middle-class comics rapping
Kinda thing I thought I’d never see happen
Now everyone’s at it, the word’s on the street
Comics hip-hopping to repetitive beats
Rhys James lays claim, he’s in the breakbeat game
And the bustin’ deeds of Jenny Bede been freed
Well-bred Brits on the verbal attack
It’ll take a nation of millions to hold them back
I give you Liam Williams with his “sad lad rap”
Glum rhyming on tap from the northern chap
Flat cap to baseball cap, the audience claps
Loud enough to plug the credibility gap.
Can a crowd very merry for this Yorkshire terrier
Carry him past the barrier to winning the Perrier?
Feels like an embargo at last been broken
Self-conscious no more about words being spoken
In the style of people whose lives are broken
From the Bronx, from Atlanta and from Hoboken
Now shit’s provoking from Wells to Woking
This ain’t just token: something’s awoken
It’s the fly new way for jokes to be joken
Middle England hip? That would be an asset
From Kanyeovil West to Wu Tang Bassett
To Eminembrugh all the way from Thanet
No fear no more of a laugh-rap planet
Now women and men, watch him go and her go
To see rap-happy comics, like Joseph Morpurgo
When you’ve seen him twice, give him a third go
He got more east-coast than Key freakin’ Largo
Not the least of his show is the hoodie-and-rhyme bit
Keeps time, goes grime, punchlines: a sublime bit
Sign of a limey who’s hitting his prime bit
Here’s the gag, how it works, you take a dull subject
Add a breakbeat, some shouting, you make it public
A rap about golf is on Morpurgo’s airplay
Smashes it right down the hip-hop fairway
Makes it sound phat, don’t make it sound puny
Goes loony with the tune he’s like a rap Wayne Rooney
Not bad for a grad of Oxford Uni
If more Ali G than Tupac Shakuri
Way back when, white women and men be self-conscious
About making as if they’re the hip-hop head honchos
Hijacking street-speak in their jolly good fun shows
But times change – even if the change is glacial
We’re all middle-class now (right?) and all post-racial
Time was rappers were worth 50 Cent
Now there’s no calculating the dough been spent
On their private health, their school admission
On their “how to write hip-hop” tuition
(It wasn’t cheap to deliver on this commission
I’m a critic – I ain’t no verbal magician
It’s not cricket to make this erudition my mission
A one-way ticket to career decomposition.)
Put your hands in the air and make some noise
Got more verbal gymnastics from a public school boy
Redeploy your joy, he’s the real McCoy
Burning brighter than a bunsen burner
Turn the lights down: it’s Chris Turner
Got 1.8 million YouTube views
For his freestyle rapping (that’s impro to you)
You give him an object, he spits out a rhyme
Give him an idea, it’s still rhyming time
Whatever you say, he finds a rhyme that chimes
His rap’s extempore – Pause – unlike mine.
(Mine’s temporary, know where to draw the line.)
Watching Chris like watching a tightrope walk
You gape, you gawk as he raps ad hoc
As he clocks the beat and rocks the talk
Then he tells the story of how he knows so
Well how to bust like a virtuoso
Know how you lose some and you win some?
Well, Chris got diagnosed with Marfan’s syndrome
His tissue as thin as the skin of a tin drum
Got 10 years to live when he was just 15
Got to give up sports, his doctors weren’t keen
Needed a new routine where sport had been
Took up rap, ain’t no sap, a hip-hop machine
The best freestyle joker the world done seen
So savour the flavour of the laugh-rap saviour
With a rhythm and a rhyme that never wavers
Think Julian Clary meets Marshall Mathers.
Maybe the meek won’t inherit the earth
But in comedy rap, ain’t no longer a dearth
Rappin’ geeks, bustin’ meek, it’s chic this week
Hello Joe’s junk shop, bye-bye Paul’s Boutique
So do do do do do believe the hype
Rap’s been tapped by a whole new type
Bet I see many more in the shows still left
Of these kicking beats, this rhyming deft
It’s the sick new sound, sonic comic heft
And if you can’t hear it, you Mos be Def.
