Right now I'm trying to process the audio for last night's city council meetings. It's pretty early I'm still kind of out of it so I decide to take a break and watch YouTube and I catch this commercial.
I HATE THIS.
I'm pretty much up for internet humor. But this, this is just stupid. The Meet The Spartans of commercials.
For those who don't know this is a "parody" of a series of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon parody segments called "The History of Rap" in which Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake sing medleys featuring some of the big hip hop hits of the last 30 years. And it "The History Rap" not the "History of Bromance" is absolutely brilliant.
When people speak in defense of the modern cut and paste culture made prevalent by the internet and digital technology. I can and do point to this and say I want a world where this is possible.
While it's hard to say that the segments are greater than the sum of their parts since "History of Rap" they go a long way in justifying their own existence and the use of someone else's work. And they do that and make that point by sampling music known for its sampling.
The performance itself is a real show probably taking real endurance on the part of Fallon and Timberlake. The songs they choose are really diverse meaning somebody had to work really hard on the transitions. The Roots are doing a lot of real instrumentation. And Fallon and Timberlake are both aware that the spirits of the songs may clash with their personas yet at the same time seem to understand and respect them and it's fun and interesting seeing them try to within seconds sometimes milliseconds get into the head space of the next song and succeeding in taking on the affectations of their performers made the more obvious in their version of Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" when Justin breaks the fourth wall and calls Jimmy on some of the lines(7:30 of the YouTube video).
The commercial on the other hand is just a reference trying to take advantage of and make money off of something popular without understanding or respecting why it's popular. And that is kind of slap to the face of not just "The History of Rap" but the history of rap.
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