Words by Eddie STATS Houghton
If you are on your rap grind you probably hearda this new-brand Weezy track which is burning up the webosphere but we couldn’t let a weird interpolation of Caribbean folk music go un-blogged. In a nice tiki-trap companion piece to Theophilus London’s King Cole impression, Bangladesh chopped up Harry Belafonte’s Coconut Grove classic “Banana Boat Song,” which of course is an authentic Jamaican folk tune, originally sung by dockworkers back in the Banana Republic days. Since Bangladesh is the creator of “A Milli”–another weird patois interpolation–we can expect that a) it will be a hit and b) if it is ‘Desh will make a career out of chopping up odd soundbites of nation language (or imitations thereof).
Stream the track here:
[audio:http://largeup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/lilwaynefeat.corygunz-67-clean.mp3|titles=lilwaynefeat.corygunz-67-clean]..But if you are a rap-nerd it’s worth checking the youtube version below with Weezy’s lyrics, some of the finest rhyming we’ve seen from the martian in a while (though we’re not mad at the new Mary J collabo either). And if you’re a culture-nerd it’s worth checking out Wayne&Wax’s hand-over-feets scholarly breakdown of the song’s textual history.