w/Whirlwind Heat, The 100th Monkey
Sat Nov 16, I-Spy, $10.
Hiphop is one of the few forms of popular music that can be openly funny and still seem legit. And few things are funnier on a basic level than white people rapping. Not all white rappers are just funny, but all white rappers are funny sometimes.
The funniest white rapper of them all is MC Paul Barman, a nebbishy Jew with curly hair, a giggly voice, and a mania for unwieldy rhymes. His raps are absurdist masterpieces of too many words and no social filters that address subjects from educational standards to female celebrities he'd like to fuck ("Winona Ryder? Goin' inside her!"). "This isn't hyperbole, it's reality verbally," he announces in the title track off Paullelujah, his first full-length CD--but "real" is the least of Barman's worries.
Like many a white rapper before him, Barman is all about casting himself in hiphop postures with humor but without apology. Like Eminem, the biggest white rapper of them all, he has a bizarrely pleasing voice, and a ginuwine, deeply eccentric talent. Also like Eminem, MCPB has a genius black producer--Prince Paul, no less--constructing his tracks. Unlike Eminem, however, Barman never tries to be hard. Both take palpable glee in offensive language. When Eminem does it, you cringe because it's so graphic. When Barman does it, you blush because it's so artful.
The main difference is that Eminem is funny, while MC Paul Barman is actually funny. Given the recent rise in white indie rockers busting out sex rhymes on stage, this is a helpful distinction. Speaking of sex rhymes, Barman's closest analogue in the world of hiphop is not Eminem at all, but Princess Superstar, who guested on his debut EP. They both get the joke about white Jews rapping, but neither one flinches from doing it well. The main difference is that the Princess' sex rhymes are actually sexy. Barman's are sort of creepy, and extra-brilliant because he knows it.
