So, let’s start with Khia. In retrospect, it’s pretty clear that her verse was pre-written as she was basically rapping to a beat that only she could hear but this non-musician sort of assumed that you know, since she wasn’t about to kill anybody on the mic anytime soon, maybe her talent was in writing vaguely-catchy hooks? Nah, she was just repeating the chorus of ‘Respect’ off her 2004 album ‘Gangstress’! She couldn’t have even just lifted a verse from one of her songs, it had to be a chorus?!
I’m confused because no matter how you look at it, her verse recycling is really sad. It either means she didn’t give a shit or is so deluded that she thought it wouldn’t matter or she thought she could get away with it, which would suggest that even she realizes that very few people heard the second album from the chick who sang ‘My Neck, My Back’ and you know, that sort of undercuts her massive ego and sense of entitlement.
It’s really fun to think of the EgoTrip crew, behind the scenes, discussing and researching the validity of Khia’s 16 bars. Serch tells her it sounded familiar but he’s being nice. No matter how big of a head Serch might be, it’s hard to imagine he’s ever bobbed his head to any songs on ‘Gangstress’. Some lyric-Googling took place and exposed Khia. So, German rapper who gives me the creeps Lionezz is back, Khia’s gone, and the show moves on.
Using Khia as a cast member reminded me of the weirdness of a show like ‘Dancing With the Stars’ who very early on, bucked its own concept by allowing fucking ice-skaters or the buff queerby dude from ‘Saved By the Bell’ who’s obviously taken some dance lessons to compete, but unlike those shows, which allow these ringers to move-on, Khia got the boot early. Only in the world of EgoTrip is there an actual sense of reality-TV justice; it’s one more way that the show does reality television on its own terms.
There’s a personal quality to ‘Miss Rap Supreme’ that prevents it from being either heart-warming garbage or exploitation trash. We learned a little bit more about Chiba’s car accident, complete with pictures of the car and her fucked-up eye and the point that it put an end to her modeling career. The show gives us this in a few quick bits of dialogue and images and then moves on, never becoming too saccharine. There was also the very touching interaction between Rece and her son Shawn. We hear Rece claim that she’s doing this “for” her son and that she even quit a job to be on the show, but there’s no music or cute montage to encourage the legitimacy of her claim. The forgettable dismissal of D.A.B at the end of tonight’s episode too, is a good example of the show’s disinterest in editorializing.
D.A.B’s story is sort of intense- this girl with a history of sexual molestation who became a drug addict- but the show doesn’t give her much of a break and never sentimentalizes. Last week and again this week, the show drops these real quick photos of D.A.B, in her underwear, surrounded by beer cans which is a little sad but let’s be real, if they were posted on SpaceGhetto or something, you’d just be laughing your ass off at how sad and pathetic it is (I think the EgoTrip guys realize this). Again, the show gives you some actual reality and not reality TV reality: Heroin addicts look busted and lay around on the floor in way-too-blue blue jeans and a sweater from the Hecht company, they are not cool.
I kinda liked D.A.B because like a lot of people who’ve gone through actual trauma, she’s humbled and good-natured, but also like people who’ve gone through a lot of trauma, she’s decided to define herself by her problems and there were only so many more embarrassing verses with heroin needle details that we could take. It was also funny when Nicky2States talks about how “hip-hop is hard” and how D.A.B isn’t “hard” even though, she’s probably the most gully in terms of having the most fucked-up life.
Oh yeah- can we talk about just how retarded the name “Nicky2States” is? Somehow, last week, I just sort of accepted it as her name, but what a fucking idiot. It’s like that girl in elementary school who had some cunty club with her friends and acted cooler than everybody but then, her club was called like “The Spending Time Together Friends Club” or something and even in third-grade you knew that was stupid. Only a person whose confidence comes from total obliviousness could seriously call herself “Nicky2States”. She’s clearly one of the more engaging and interesting cast members, but Nicky2States mainly annoys me.
But ‘Miss Rap Supreme’ is sort of complicated, so Nicky2States was featured in the most hilarious and out-there part of tonight’s episode: A blow-up doll love montage set to the song ‘Tender Love’ by Force MDs! It’s weirdo moments like this that move ‘Miss Rap Supreme’ not only out of the realm of big, dumb reality show and into the realm of smart, corrective, reality show, but towards just being this really strange, out-there show that at moments like that, have you surprised this is even on television.
There’s a hand-crafted feeling to the show that rejects clean graphics and replaces it with a ‘Price Is Right’ 70s throwback design and a swinging signs caked with A.C. Moore glitter. The joke of showing Nicky2States getting it on with a thugged-out blow-up doll set to ‘Tender Love’ is the same joke going on when a prop phonograph mutters out “yes, yes y’all, mirror mirror y’all” to signal the ladies that a new message from YoYo is about to come through. The joke isn’t so much that this shit is actually funny but that this shit isn’t funny and that makes it funny. It’s retarded. It’s “can you believe we just put a singing phonograph on TV and had it chant a totally forgettable catchphrase?”. You get the sense that the EgoTrip guys are as entertained by the show as the viewers.
A few other things…
-I kept seeing a commercials for ‘Best Day Ever’. Is it only a matter of time before the former ‘Best Week Ever’ turned ‘Best Day Ever’ becomes something like ‘Best Hour Ever’?
-Lady Twist as a three year-old in a bathing suit is really great.
-Ms. Cheri somehow bypassed rap altogether and somehow dropped a comedy routine straight off of Lady Reed’s ‘Will the Real Dick Rise’? or something. What was going on there?
-The show still lacks a stand-out or engaging personality outside of the out-there drama craziness of Chiba and at times, Nicky2States.
-Just get Bree the fuck out of there. She’s like this dopey pothead girl in a bucket hat at a party, just hovering in the background and making everything weird.
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