Juggalos rejoice! The new Insane Clown Posse album is finally out this week — it was due earlier this year, but record company wrangling resulted in its release date being pushed until the end of summer. Of course, beyond their selective appeal to Faygo devotees, ICP are largely known to the general public because of the immortal couplets from their 2009 single “Miracles,” which will go down in history as one of the most ridiculous and somehow awesome songs ever made. In celebration of their new record, then, here’s a selection of the most gloriously awesome lyrics that hip hop has given the world. Your suggestions are of course welcome. (And just to pre-empt any of the accusations that have a magical way of appearing in our comments section every time we say anything remotely negative about hip hop: we’ve done this before for ’80s pop songs and we’ll most likely do it for other genres in due course. So there.)
Insane Clown Posse — “Miracles”
Best bit: “Water, fire, air and dirt/ Fucking magnets, how do they work?/ And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist/ Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed”
Yeah, we know the Internet went crazy (ironically crazy, of course) about this song a couple of years back, but we still think that between the song’s actually rather touching idiot savant view of the world and the immortal “magnets” line above, it’s unsurpassed in the band’s oeuvre as far as sheer absurd glory goes.
Foxy Brown on Nas’s “Affirmative Action”
Best bit: “Thirty-two grams raw/ Chop it in half/ Get 16, double it times three/ We got 48/ Which mean a whole lot of cream/ Divide the profit by four/ Subtract it by eight/ We back to 16”
Um… hang on, no, we’re not! Is Foxy trying to diddle us here, or does she just struggle with arithmetic? Or does Nas — who actually wrote this — know something we don’t?
Will Smith — “Gettin’ Jiggy With it”
Best bit: “Ciga-cigar right from Cuba-Cuba/ I just bite it/ It’s for the look/ I don’t light it”
Meanwhile, from the world of measuring out uncut cocaine (or trying to, at least) to the world of Mr. Squeaky Clean, the man who turned down The Matrix because it might have been a bit too edgy. Smith’s abiding lameness is pretty much embodied by the lame-tastic lines above — for god’s sake, who pretends to smoke?
Dr Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg — “Ain’t Nuthin But a G Thang”
Best bit: “Never let me slip/ ‘Cause if I slip/ Then I’m slippin'”
Snoop’s verses on this classic are as smooth as velvet. Dr. Dre’s verses… well, they go to show that he’s a fine producer, eh?
Kanye West — “Monster”
Best bit: “Have you ever had sex with a pharaoh?/ I put the pussy in the sarcophagus/ Now she’s claiming that I bruised her esophagus/ Head of the class, now she just wanna swallow shit”
And speaking of the great producer/terrible rapper phenomenon, we give you the all-time best example thereof: Kanye Omari West, the man who’s been responsible for some of the finest productions of the last decade or so, along with some of the most ridiculous rhymes. We’re almost tempted to give the prize to his freestyles, but really, nothing beats rhyming “sarcophagus” with “esophagus” and, um, “swallow shit.”
Lil B — “Wonton Soup”
Best bit: “Thirty on my dick on that court like Spalding/ Bitches suck my dick because I look like JK Rowling”
But anyway, we’re slipping from the realms of the “hilariously bad” into the “just plain bad,” so let’s bring it back to the original concept with the man who’s both walked and blurred the line between ineptitude and genius better than anyone for the last few years. It’s pretty much “pick your favorite Lil B lyric” here, but we’ll go with the immortal couplet above from “Wonton Soup,” about which… well, what can you say, really?
Wu-Tang Clan — “Shame on a Nigga”
Best bit: “Burn me, I get into shit, I let it out like diarrhea/ Got burnt once, but that was only gonorrhea”
You could argue that Lil B’s idiosyncratic brand of rap has gone some way toward filling the hole left by the the death of the Wu-Tang Clan’s resident lunatic and occasional genius Russell Tyrone Jones, aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Only Jones could possibly get away with rhyming “gonorrhea” with “diarrhea,” although whether he actually did get away with it in this case remains very much open for debate.
Eminem — “Ass Like That”
Best bit: “You make my pee-pee go/ Doing-doing-doing”
Lessons in life, vol 124242138: referring to your penis as a “pee-pee” (let along referring to said pee-pee going “doing-doing-doing”) is generally not a great way to get laid. This song still isn’t as bad as “My Humps” — the gold standard for the hilariously unappealing “sexy” song — but by god it’s doing its best.
50 Cent — “I’m Supposed to Die Tonight”
Best bit: “Sometimes I sit and look at life from a different angle/ Don’t know if I’m God’s child or I’m Satan’s angel”
Yes, he really did just rhyme “angle” with “angel.”
Shaquille O’Neal — “Shoot Pass Slam”
Best bit: “Do you want me to shoot it? No!/ Do you want me to pass it? No!/ Do you want me to slam? Yeah!” (ad infinitum)
And finally, behold: the most singularly pointless hip hop track ever. (Especially since everyone knows Shaq couldn’t shoot it if his life depended on it.)