Hip-Hop and Vaudeville: the Cognitive Dissonance of the Hip-Hop Skit

“Hello, boys and girls. Welcome to Wyclef Words of Wisdom. I’m here with an emcee everyone is scared of. He has killed over a million people on record, and he’s still not locked up…uhm…What is your name, sir?

Knaw’m I’m saying, uhm.

Yeah, basically, if you have killed so many people, why aren’t you locked up?

I’m saying, though, like, knaw’m I’m saying.

Yeah, exactly my point. Don’t believe the hype.”

This skit, “Killer M.C.,” from Wyclef Jean’s, The Carnival, follows a track called “Street Justice,” the chorus of which goes, “Have you ever heard the sound of a .44 at your door. You got guns, I got guns, meet me at the corner store.” Now, if anyone is conscious of the absurdity of hip-hop’s focus on violence, it’s Wyclef—but more than this, like B.I.G., he’s able to embrace the ‘street life ideal’ while simultaneously ridiculing it. It’s this doublethink that makes these two emcees such a great model for our current writers.

But I digress (or do I ingress?). Regardless. The hip-hop skit is a unique form that had its origins with De La Soul and their producer Prince Paul. Their skits were qualitatively different from what you may have heard from the Wu-Tang or the Fugees. For one, they were often ‘half-rapped.’ That is, there was some sort of musical production and the emcees would bullshit and fall in and out of rhyme. Take this example from the Say No Go 12” called “The Mack Daddy on the Left”:

De La Soul:
Girls, girls, girls, girls,
These girls I do adore [Jay-Z anyone?]
Walking down the street watchin’
ladies, Aaow, watchin’…

MASE:
Hold up, hold up, let’s give it to the Mack Daddy over to the left…

Jeff:
Pity pity pity pity whack whack whack
A moo moo moo, a jumping jack…

Weird, right? De La Soul had a pretty positive and optimistic tone, so these moments didn’t form the sort of cognitive dissonance that we see in B.I.G. But the important thing is that these guys were having fun, fucking around, saying nonsense; however, much as they were artists, here they were comedians, or they were just some guys, hanging out. This was 1989.

By ‘93, the style of hip-hop skits drastically changed, as did the subject matter, but the focus on comedy remained. Enter Enter the Wu-Tang. Here, arguably, the hip-hop skit reached its pinnacle, both in the quality of its humor and in level of its self-parody.

Here is one skit in its entirety, from the beginning of Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber. But to truly appreciate this piece, you have to listen to it: the intonations, the near unintelligibility of certain lines, the way they all talk over one other as if the entire thing was improvised (it may have been). [M] is Method Man, [R] is Raekwon the Chef, [G] is Ghostface Killah, and [U] is U-God.

[M] Yo, what I’m saying, come on man?
[R] Yo, Meth, hold up, hold up, yo, Meth, where my Killah tape at, ya? First of all, where my—where the fuck is my tape at?
[M] Yo, son, I ain’t got that peace son.
[R] How you ain’t got my shit when I let you hold it, man?
[M] Yo, niggas came over to have 40s and blunts kid, the shit just came up missin’, son.
[R] Come on, man, that don’t got nothing to do with my shit, man. Come on, go head with that shit.
[M] Come on, man, I’ll buy you four more fuckin’ Killah tapes, man.

*knock knock*

[R] Open the door man, what the fuck, man. Yo what—what’s up?
[G] Yo, yo, god, word is bond, yo. Shamique just got bust in his head two times, god. [word to mother] Real life, god, you know Shamique from fuckin’ 212 [yeah, yeah, yeah]. The nigga just got bust, niggas, in the black Land*, god. Word is bond, came through, god from out of nowhere, god. Word is bond, I’m coming to get my Culture Cypher*, god, and it just—word is bond, crazy shots just went the fuck off, god. The nigga laying there like a fuckin’ new born fucking baby, god.
[M] Is he dead? [word up]
[G] Is he fuckin’ dead, what the fuck you mean is he fuckin’ dead, god? [What kind of question is that B, what the fuck you think?] The nigga laying there with this fuckin’ all types of fuckin’ blood comin’ out of his—
[U] Is he—is he—is he—is he dead?
[G] Yo, god, what’s up god, its’ the god, god, word is bond, yo, what’s up? I’m waiting to fucking ‘late*. I’m ready to get busy. God, what’s up?
[R] Let’s go do—let’s go do what we gotta do, right, fuck it.
[U] What’s up, yo, yo, we out or what?
[G] It’s the god, ya, fuck that. We out, got a problem man, what the fuck.
[U] Nigga still sweatin’.
[G] What the fuck is you talking about, man? Get the fuck outta here.

* As in “the Black Toyota Landcruiser”
* Or “my coat to cypher”?
*As in “regulate”, as in “lay the smack down.”

The skit may seem slightly impenetrable (or perhaps unfunny) if you aren’t familiar with the Wu-Tang, or with hip-hop in general. That’s because its humor is mainly derived from its admittedly subtle form of self-parody. Wu-Tang is certainly not light on the use of violence (the first line of the album: “Ghostface, catch the blast of a hype verse, my glock burst leave in a hearse—I did worse) and one might even say that they fit the perfect model of the sort of emcee Wyclef is mocking in the Killer M.C. skit. However, coming from the Stapleton projects on Staten Island, Wu-Tang is at home with street violence, and songs like “C.R.E.A.M.” give a matter-of-fact depiction of their world (Cash Rules Everything Around Me: C.R.E.A.M. Get the Money, dollar-dollar bill y’all). So, how do we approach this absurd scene where Raekwon and Methodman are chillin’ on the couch, say, arguing about some tape, when Ghostface bursts in with news that someone has been shot in the head? My contention is that no one, and I mean not even Ghostface Killah, could say “word is bond,” “fuckin’” and “god,” as many times as he does in all seriousness. So on one level, the entire skit—voices layered over voices with the slang-factor pushed to the limit—is a parody of their dominant mode of communication. On another level, it treats of the cavalier attitude towards violence and death. The key moment here is the brilliantly funny and easy to miss background line by U-God (“Is he—is he—is he—is he dead?”) mocking Methodman for asking such a silly question about someone with “fuckin’ all types of fuckin’ blood comin’ out” of his head.

These guys clearly know that all their posturing is bullshit, and consequently, they can have fun at their own expense—all the same, they’re from the projects, and they probably did know a guy named Shamique (however you spell that) who got bust in the head, two times, god. Wu-Tang finds no contradiction between satirizing their street-life and telling us how real they are. The same applies to B.I.G. and to Wyclef.

Before returning to the state of things literary, I think it would be a nice diversion to take some time to listen to a few hip-hop skits, if you haven’t already. I’ll be back shortly with a word for your mother.

Some Notable Skits: “The Chinese Restaurant” – The Fugees (the end of the “The Beast”); “Good Day, Good Sir” – Andre 3000; “Heart Street Directions” – Ghostface Killah; “The Mad Rapper” – B.I.G. (The beginning of “Kick in the Door”); “Torture” – The Wu-Tang Clan (the beginning of “Methodman”); “#!*@ Me” – B.I.G

By Christopher Robinson

Read Part I here.