Raps, Covers and Folds...

It's probably fair to say that I have a man-crush on Ben Folds. There's just something about nerdy-looking white guys playing piano that does it for me. Over the last few weeks I have been buying me some of Folds' solo albums including last week's purchase of the compilation album Supersunnyspeedgraphic, The LP.
Listening to the album for the first time the other day I found myself thinking "I've heard this song before somewhere" and indeed I had. It was Folds' cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit", a song that I had discovered some years ago before dismissing it as a disgusting and rather ridiculous choice of cover song. A few years later though and I find myself unable to stop listening to the song.

I can't put my finger on exactly what makes this song so listenable but I think it's all about the context, or lack thereof. The original version of the song - despite being excruciatingly awful - is a true product of the gangsta rap ethos to which the contributing 'artists' subscribe and doesn't strike the listener as weird or out of place. Abhorrently misogynistic but not weird or out of place. However, if you take the lyrics to such a song and have them sung by a nerdy looking white fella over a beautifully lush piano-driven arrangement and something feels very, very wrong. Especially when the aforementioned white fella is dropping the N-bomb.

I'm not quite sure if Mr. Folds was trying to highlight how ridiculously repugnant and/or context dependent the lyrics are or if he is just genuinely a fan of Dr. Dre and wanted to pay tribute to him. Either way the result is the same - Ben Folds' cover version is brilliant. As is this cover of Ben Folds' cover, by a 14-piece A Capella group no less.

All of this talk of songs removed from their original context has reminded me of Andrew Hansen's lounge version of the Cannibal Corpse song "Rancid Amputation" from The Chaser's War on Everything a few years back. Another truly horrific attempt at 'songwriting' turned into something clever and entertaining just by way of a genre change.

You know, we might even be on to something here. Perhaps all a bad song needs is a genre change. Let's see now - Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" as played by Chris Daughtry? Tick. Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" as performed by Richard Cheese? You betcha. Valeri Glava's version of Britney Spears' "Womaniser"? It couldn't be any worse...