Dunno what it was, maybe it had something to do with the ton of typical reality show drama throughout tonight’s show, but it became even more clear in this episode than in previous ones (and last year’s entire season) that none of these people have any chance of an actual rap career. That, along with the dangling of the really rather small prize of 100 grand makes the show a little sad to watch- sad like the photo of Bree’s cokehead/Jimmy Buffett-fan looking dad who died when she was fourteen. The whole series is even more of an explicit joke than most reality shows, but a kind of weird sympathy occurs precisely because ‘Miss Rap Supreme’ doesn’t in any way try to look like it’s doing anything but make fun of these wannabe girl rappers. The show actually ends up being less condescending because it doesn’t try to convince all the snarky viewers that it gives a shit about these people and through that, we kind of project our own sympathies and frustrations onto the cast members. Also: No Homo on this awful PUMA ad that popped-up a few times during tonight’s episode.
As with last season, the contests, especially the ones that don’t’ involve rapping, feel like something of an after-thought. Why did the potential Miss Rap Supremes have to be part of this weird “dress like a rapper” contest/pageant? I think they should’ve had to rap in the style of the rapper they had to dress like or something. Still, it was cool that Byata dressed like Kanye West circa 2003, and Ms. Cherry’s Tupac impression was very good, in part because Tupac, with tweezed eyebrows and way-too beautiful skin kinda already looked like a drag-king.
The highlight of the show was an appearance by Too $hort which led to the contestants having to spit their own version of a freaky tale right back at Short Dog. All the girls failed because they saw what Short was doing as a gender-based version of battle-rapping when really, what Too $hort does is sexually-explicit storytellng; he’s rarely talking straight at his targets the way the girls all decided to do, which makes his raps less bragging or insulting and more like a friend telling you about the retarded blowjob he got last night or something. I know it’s a reality show and all, but it’s also a little sad to see Too $hort reduced to a filthy and offensive rapper. $hort’s got this really sensitive side (famously: “Life is/to some/Unbearable/Commit suicide/And that’s terrible”) and his verses on recent songs like ‘Bossy’ by Kelis or ‘Didn’t I Tell You’ by Keyshia Cole, show him taking on a kind of, wizzened dad-like persona, proud of these younger women. In the episode however, $hort couldn’t muster up that sympathy or pride and mainly just looked uncomfortable. Rap guest-stars on ‘Miss Rap Supreme’ and last year’s ‘White Rapper Show’ often fall-flat because the show basically confronts an older rap-legend with a bunch of terrible but earnest rap wannabes and it’s really hard to tell them to their faces about how bad they are, so you get Ghostface or Too $hort sort of stumbling through the event trying to help-out and not shit all over these sad kids. Also, rappers are really nice and kinda down-to-earth and you see that in Ghostface as he steps back and listens and looks for the good, even in the now kicked-out-twice Lionezz.
One of the interesting sidebars of this week’s episode was a kind of vague interest in race, specifically white humiliation. Late in the episode, the winning team is given the Salt-N-Pepa suite and on the bed is that vaguely Napoleon Dynamite nerd bellhop, in briefs and part of his uniform. Nicky2States begins paddling his ass and demanding he scream out “I’m black and I’m proud” and later, he’s forced to dance around; it’s like some weird scene from an early John Waters or Robert Downey Sr. movie or something. Earlier in the episode, Byata, who’s on her William Blake shit, getting these like answers to the world through her incredibly literal dreams, calls Chiba “the devil” and gets all pissy when Chiba sends it back calling her, without fully saying it, a white devil. This is something that’s been going on in all the episodes in a scene or two: The white females using their whiteness as an excuse. When D.A.B and Lionezz are picked last in the first challenge, D.A.B sort of addresses it as being “the white girl” when in fact, it’s just her talent that makes her undesirable and in an early freestyle, Byata says something about how she “cant help it” if she “sounds black”, which is a shameless and indirect way to get around race appropriation issues that no one’s even brought-up. Throughout the heated but ultimately silly argument (because again, what are they really competing for?), I kept waiting for the big joke about Chiba’s fucked-up eye and then, in next week’s episode, there it is!
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7 Jun 12 at 12:38 am
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9 Oct 14 at 6:15 am