Rap Music: It Sucks!

Let's face it, rap music sucks. Sure, there are exceptions such as "O.P.P." and "White Lines," but in general the genre sucks. So why is this the case? I posit it's because the majority of rappers are untalented hacks. From my exhaustive and highly scientific research into the rap music genre, I have concluded that a rap song will only be successful if it's subject matter is about at least one of the following:

1. Bitches
2. Hoes
3. Skanks
4. Tramps
5. Harlots
6. Floozies
7. Sluts
8. Hussies
9. Prostitutes

Although the demeanor, mannerisms and social behavior of the human female in modern American society are frequent subjects of the genre, rap songs can also be successful if they are about:

1. Guns
2. Drugs (preferably cocaine)
3. Gangstas
4. Niggas
5. Homies
6. Da hood yo!
7. Motherfuckers
8. Badonkadonks

But really, why does rap suck? To begin with, rappers have retarded names like Snoop Dogg, Flava Flav, and Xzibit. Rap songs tend to feature poorly sung, dumb, misogynistic lyrics backed up by incredibly repetitive beats which I doubt they created themselves. When they aren't objectifying women, rappers sing about other similarly cliche, uninspired subject matter that's become a staple of the genre, like tits and hating gay people. This is probably the result of the homogenous (that's homo-genous rappers, don't worry, I'm not accusing you of being pinko fags) nature of rap; rappers are almost all young black men, or white men trying to act like them. The lack of diversity in rap music hinders creativity by encouraging rappers to repeat the same formulaic garbage used by other successful rappers. This has fostered a creatively bankrupt system in which rap as a medium can't evolve. Rap music hasn't changed in 20 years. It was bollocks then, now it's just new bollocks.

The Top 5 Worst Movies of All Time: Introduction

Since the invention of movie making there have always been movies which people consider to be bad. Although many bad movies simply "suck" there are a few which, and I believe this is the technical term, "blow" or even "blow chunks." A movie is said to blow when it exceeds the maximum threshold in any given unwanted area of movie making. A film can be morally offensive, such as when it depicts shameful racist or sexist caricatures. It can be artistically offensive, meaning the film is of such poor quality creatively or technically that you're offended by it, as though the filmmakers are insulting your intelligence; in my mind nothing is worse when making a movie than apathy, because normally after a bad movie you can take solace in knowing that the creators at least tried to make something good, but it's obvious when zero effort went into a movie and that it was only a sleazy attempt to separate you from your money. A film can also be boring, which is the worst possible scenario. A horrible movie can at least be fun to rant about after seeing it, but a boring movie is a deadening movie. A boring film drains any enthusiasm or spirit you had going into it so that you can't even muster up the energy to complain about it.

Having said all that, I'd like to run down what I consider to be the top 5 (or bottom 5 depending on how you look at it) movies I've ever seen. Strangely enough, none of them are movies you'd expect to be on a worst of list. None of them are Battlefield Earth or Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo or Caligula. All of them are in fact movies other people actually like. I guess I'm just an outsider. If a movie appears on my list that you personally like, please, give my points a fair listen. I certainly don't blame you if you like them; I'm not an art snob. But first, before the bottom 5, an honorable mention. Something to whet the appetite before digging into the main course. I present to you, the reader, my thoughts on Heavy Metal.

Heavy Metal is not so much a film as it is a Kindgarten student's unfinished 90 minute flash animation. It is singularly the worst animated movie I've ever seen (spoiler alert: none of my top 5 worst movies are animated). It's hard to know where to begin because every aspect of Heavy Metal is absolutely atrocious. Let's look at a screenshot:

The animation is hideous. Outlines are crude, jagged, in many cases unfinished. Shading and contrast are very poor. Shading and animation pop in-and-out of numerous shots. Human bodies are exaggerated and disproportional and the women have breasts the size of their heads. Tons of pointless T 'n' A and sex scenes where the female character's will spontaneously, and for no reason, give themselves over to male character's they've known for 30 seconds. Of course, when T 'n' A shows up to a movie her drug-addled boyfriend Blood 'n' Guts is often not far behind. The movie is saturated with pointless and disgusting scenes of brutal death and dismemberment. The lip-synch is horrendous, worse than sock puppet theater. However, even if the lip-synch were done well it wouldn't matter because the voice acting is flat and uncompelling.

Every scene in the movie is completely nonsensical. The movie is broken into various disjointed and incoherent segments that make no sense even within its own warped logic and the segments themselves are barely held together by a haphazard narrative. If that weren't enough, every scene is bursting with mind-numbing stupidity.

The ultimate travesty of the movie is its soundtrack. In a movie called Heavy Metal, filled with tits and violence and muscled action hero dudes riding dinosaurs to rescue busty princesses, the majority of the soundtrack is not heavy metal music but instead bland orchestral scores, and the few heavy metal songs in the movie are dull. Also of note, Heavy Metal has the worst scene in movie history of a genitalia-less robot built by coke-addicted aliens having sex with a red-headed human nurse sucked into the alien space ship by a giant vacuum, and that's saying something.

Nostalgia Critic: Top 11 Villain Songs

I love the Nostalgia Critic. I think he's incredibly funny and I visit his website, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, all the time. That said, I thought his latest video, Top 11 Villain Songs, was very sloppy. A lot of the songs seemed like poor choices and some didn't even make sense being on the list. So I thought I'd go through the list and explain why I felt it was so poor.

To start with, I assumed that all the songs on the list would be dark and menacing songs sung by a villain. I also figured because of that criteria that there would be a lot of songs from older Disney animated movies, and this being the Nostalgia Critic, that that would work out fine. To recap, the rules as I saw them were:

1) The song must be dark and menacing.

2) It must be sung by a villain

3) It must be nostalgic (i.e. old)

According to the criteria, how well did the songs do? Very badly.

Already we've run into trouble and the list hasn't even begun yet. In the title card for the video we see five figures. Four of them star in villainous songs in the video, but the fifth one, Oogie Boogie, the one who's centered in the middle of the image and standing in front of the other figures is not featured. Why would you put him there if you didn't intend for him to be in the video? Moving on...

11) "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Problems again. The song is not sung by the villain, it's sung by a narrator. Okay, fine. But then the song is also whimsical, about Christmas, and in a children's cartoon. We're not starting out very dark or menacing. However, the song is catchy and well sung, so I'll let it pass.

10) "Shiver My Timbers" from Muppet Treasure Island

Again, wtf? The song is sung by a chorus of random unnamed pirates and goofy muppet creatures. There is no established villain and the song is neither dark nor menacing. To make matters worse, Doug Walker admits to not even having seen the movie. C'mon dude, take an hour and a half out of your video making time and watch the movie. The fact that he hasn't seen the movie means some of the impact is lost and he can't comment/joke about any of the contextual things that happen around the song.

9) "Friends on the Other Side" from The Princess and the Frog

Three songs in the video gets good. The song is sung by a villain, it's dark, menacing, colorful, well made, and the villain's voice is very diabolical sounding. Just one problem: The song is from 2009! What the hell are you doing putting something from 2009 in a Nostalgia Critic video?

8) "Pretty Women" from Sweeny Todd

It's not dark or menacing in any way, it's just plain goofy. It's also really stupid.

7) "Sweet Transvestite" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and "Dentist" from Little Shop of Horrors

The Nostalgia Critic puts both songs at this number because they're similar. Indeed, they're both similarly out-of-place. Both are over-the-top silly songs that have no place being on a best of list for villainous songs. Both don't feature a villain: Steve Martin's character is more of an asshole than anything else and Tim Curry's character doesn't seem at all villainous, although even if you conclude that he is the song itself isn't villainous either.

6) "In the Dark of the Night" from Anastasia

The song is awful. As the Nostalgia Critic himself points out, the villain isn't so much singing menacingly as he is "talking in rhyme with musical accompaniment" (a problem that will afflict additional movies on the list) and the "prancing pink bugs" don't help the already bad atmosphere. To top it off, the song sounds more like a religious choir song than a villain song.

5) "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from The Little Mermaid

I would say it was an all around well made villain song with catchy lyrics but, and this is the key to understanding why this song is bad, Ursula's voice is like getting ear-raped by the devil.

4) "He Had It Comin'" from Chicago

This is not a villain song. This is a song about villains, not sung by them. It's also silly and over-the-top. I just feel... fuck.

3) "Be Prepared" from The Lion King

The villain is not singing, he is, again, talking in rhyme with musical accompaniment.

2) "Secret of Survival" from Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

Goofy. Silly. Fail.

1) "Hellfire" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame

What I find ironic about the #1 song is that it's the worst song on the list. Not only is the villain talking (not singing) with musical accompaniment, he isn't even bothering to rhyme. The background music itself is the most bland orchestral/choir music you could possibly come up with.

I'm seriously shocked at how bad the video was. None of the songs worked. Hope the next video won't be a disappointment.