Piss-Take Rap

"Doctor who? Doctor Hewson!
Sit up straight when I'm talking to you, son!
The magical might from the radical right
Gonna light up the night with a scheme and a dream so bright
So sit right back while we bite back,
This is called Fightback, me and my G on the right track
And we won't stop 'till we get our way,
G-S-T, OK!
(Hey, ho! Hey, ho! Hey, ho! Hey, ho!)"

— Dr John Hewson, Keating! The Musical

Sometimes, there are gods on the mic. But not these characters. When they rap, glass breaks and people cover their ears.

A Rap performance by someone who is perceived to be unable to rap. A mix between the Dreadful Musician and an Awkward Poetry Reading, the only characters (or audiences) pleased by this are ones who enjoy Cringe Comedy and watching a fool embarrass themself. Anyone hoping for good rapping is disappointed. There are a couple possible reasons for their sad disapproval.

The most obvious is that the wannabe-rapper is simply bad. Rap is a challenging act that demands lyrical skill, rhythm, wit, and charisma — and wow, does this idiot not have any of that. Expect lots of self-introduction, clumsy rhythm, lyrics with Painful Rhyme (or no rhyme), slang that is Totally Radical, and maybe a groan-worthy Pun or two. If Boastful Raps utterly fail as their bravado collapses, it's especially humiliating.

Another possible objection (that can be explicit or implicit) has to do with the performer's race. It's less that the character can't rap because they are not good enough, and more that they shouldn't because they are not black enough. For some, rap is so intrinsically connected to blackness that doing the former without authentically embodying the latter seems a tasteless attempt to act Pretty Fly for a White Guy. Indeed the target of mockery here is probably (very) white, but characters of other races can qualify, especially if they are Asian and Nerdy. Ironically, even The Whitest Black Guy can face this! In any case, the person is framed as ridiculous for even trying.

This attitude can be found in works from The '90s, but in recent decades has become progressively more Broken. Hip-hop has gained mainstream appeal around the world, and rappers of all hues and shades now practice it. Any enthusiast would rightly credit black artists for conceiving it, but fewer would agree that any genre can be the exclusive domain of one group. And some would object more strongly, since they have seen that even if this idea ("only black people rap") is well-intended, it too-often gets twisted by Logical Fallacies into something harmful ("all black people rap" or "black people only rap and nothing else"). Suffice it to say this is an Evolving Trope.

While the racial objection is rarely played straight anymore, it can be Subverted for a satisfying Stereotype Flip: a character who doesn't look like a stereotypical rapper reveals they are amazing at it. If a rapper is undeniably and unabashedly dorky but doesn't let it interfere with an enthusiastic performance, it may qualify as Nerdcore. Compare A Wild Rapper Appears!, which may make you laugh in surprise at how unexpected it is.

Separate from but similar to the concept of "beef," a term for calling out another rapper for his lack of lyrical skills. Not to be confused with Rap Is Crap, which is when rap music as a whole is presented as terrible.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Let's face it, this trope was everywhere in Totally Radical TV commercials for kids between about 1985 and 1995 (hell, it was everywhere, period, when it came to kids from 1985 to 1995.) Even more absurdly, almost all of them played the trope straight. A notable exception was a popular anti-marijuana spot ("The wacky weed, it is bad..."), which implicitly admitted that parents of teenagers trying to rap was at the very least unusual.
• In an animated snack commercial, right on the heels of a bunch of students, an old lunchlady starts rapping at least as competently as the rest of them. Everyone stops and stares at her. The commercial seems to take for granted (as the kids certainly do) that for some reason, this is Not Cool.
• The Manning brothers try their hand at this in a DirecTV commercial for Football On Your Phone.
• One of the commercials for Protegent has their Whyatt Expy extol the virtues of their antivirus software. Needless to say, neither the rap song nor the software itself (or the ad campaign for that matter) impressed anyone.
• The infamous “rap” for the original The Legend of Zelda game for the NES. Watchable here.

Alternate Reality Games

• Omega Mart: Played with. The performers that rap the rules and regulations throughout the training video, Nate and Hilla, start off with a hokey, dime-a-dozen corporate rap at the beginning of each song, but the beats become more complex as they go on.

Anime & Manga

• Volume eight of Light Novel High School D×D reveals that Koneko, usually a stoic character, loves rap music made by a kappa of all things.
• At one point in Gintama, Katsura decides to promote his activism by practicing a hilariously bad rap. The infamous "Katsurap" became somewhat of a Memetic Mutation.
  Katsura: Joui is Joy, joy is Joui!
• At one point in the Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- anime, while a group of Buddhas set out to find and drag Dainichi Nyorai back to the temple, Fudō busts out a bout of this while asking a random human girl for Dainichi's whereabouts. The girl isn't impressed.
• Naruto: Naruto and Killer Bee's raps are terrible and even Yamato states that they should stop rapping out of frustration.
• In Zombie Loan, The Stoic Shito mentions during a karaoke scene that he likes rap. When the story cuts back to them, an Imagine Spot shows The Hero Michiru imagining Shito rapping with an incredibly deadpan face and a strange monotone, remarking that it sounds more like a buddhist mantra than anything else.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: Whenever Shirogane attempts to rap, it doesn't end well for those who listen to it. Hell, it's probably so bad that the viewers can't even hear the lyrics. Luckily, Fujiwara helps him to improve and did so in Chapter 108 (Episode 29 in the anime).

Comedy

• Kevin Hart:
  • He talks about how he can't rap because of his high pitched voice, in one of his comedy specials:
    Kevin: [high-pitched voice] Yeah, bitch, I'm a killer, I shoot you in your face. [makes finger guns] "Pshoom, Pshoom, Everybody gon' die. Pshoom pshoom, everybody gon' die tonight." Did he just say "Pshoom, pshoom"? I'm not buying that shit if he said "pshoom, pshoom".
  • Also his character Chocolate Drop (Droppa)
• When he hosted the 2014 Tonys, Hugh Jackman (along with LL Cool J and others) tried to rap Rock Island, the opening number from The Music Man. It was exactly as bad as it sounds.

Fan Works

• Cool Cat and the Beauty of War and Destruction^note It's a crack fic: Daddy Derek has a rap battle with Patrick Bateman where he mocks him for being miserable and having a fanbase of young boys. Though Patrick's isn't any better, he's decided the winner.

Films — Animation

• FernGully: The Last Rainforest features a rap song by Batty, who is voiced by Robin Williams.
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, Snips' and Snails' entry in the musical showcase is an attempt at freestyle rap. Emphasis on "attempt". It is as bad as it sounds; having one lyric end on the Least Rhymable Word "orange" doesn't help. Neither does the Mic Drop at the end, complete with feedback. Although Pinkie Pie and Sonata Dusk seem to be enjoying it....
• In Titanic: The Legend Goes On, two words; "Party Time". It was switched out for a different rap in the uncut version.

Films — Live-Action

• The title character in Bulworth. Just about every black character in the movie (including those who agree with his message) gets at least one snarky comment about his rapping skills.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): When Chip and Dale infiltrate the Russian spa and need a distraction, Dale starts rapping. Under the pressure, he is only able to rhyme "Dale" and "whale", while stuck on the idea of protecting whales.
• Tommy Chong in Far Out Man.
• In the movie version of Grease, TV host Vince Fontaine does what might be thought of as the 1950's version of this — namely, talking at a comically fast tempo while rhyming every fourth or fifth word.
• The main character of Malibu's Most Wanted thinks he's a wonderful rapper. He gets a rude awakening when the guys hired to "scare the black out of him" enter him in a rap battle. He mentions that he sent a demo CD of his rap songs to Dr. Dre. The Stinger has Dre listen to it for a few seconds and then use the CD for target practice. "Pull!"
• Kevin G's rap in Mean Girls is played as this. The comedy of the scene is supposed to come from the character being too nerdy to rap.
• Tex Richman's Villain Song in The Muppets (2011). Oddly enough, most people thought it was good.
• Office Space: "Back up in your ass with the resurrection." Especially funny because this line is delivered by a South Asian immigrant, complete with the foreign accent.
• There's a rapping sequence in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Mel Brooks himself also released two rap singles to promote his movies: "It's Good to Be the King," for History of the World Part I and "Hitler Rap" for To Be or Not to Be.
• Scenes From A Mall has three black Hip-Hop artists entertaining Christmas shoppers in a Beverly Hills shopping mall. Not quite this trope, but then we see a mime (played by Steve Irwin) bopping along to the music.
• Sorry to Bother You: Cassius is invited to a penthouse party for the company higher ups, and the CEO assumes he can rap, and tells him to get on stage. Cassius first tries awkwardly mumbling some rhymes, until he just starting "n*gga shit, n*gga shit" and the all-white crowd enthusiastically chants it back.
• The rapping granny in The Wedding Singer.

Literature

• In All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America, black American columnist and linguistics professor John McWhorter parodies what he calls the parenthetical politics of rap in "the first and last rap I will ever try to write":
  Hand me a blunt and back up dat ass
  You stay up front and don't pass me no gas
  I'm on you niggity fast
  Before you ever done ast
  But you know dis nigga can last (bam!)
  Dem factory jobs my Pops done worked is far in da past.

Live-Action TV

• House raps near the end of the first episode of the sixth season of House.
• Look Around You: In Season 2, this is done by a black man. Antony Carmichael, a profiteroles chef, painfully awkwardly introduces 1980's Britain to the world of rap music.
• Flight of the Conchords:
  Some people say rappers don't have feelings.
  We have feelings!
  Some people say we're not rappers.
  We're rappers!
  It hurts our feelings when you say we're not rappers...
  • Also their big new york HBO show, where they claim "Back in New Zealand, we invented rap..."
    I'm the hip-hop-opotamus, my rhymes are bottomless, uh... [silence]
• Saturday Night Live:
  • This was a recurring shtick for Chris Parnell, who would do hardcore raps on mundane topics during Weekend Update.
  • As well as for Amy Poehler, who most famously performed a hardcore rap about Sarah Palin on Weekend Update, complete with backup dancing Eskimos, Fake Todd Palin, and a guy in a moose suit. While the real Palin bopped around next to her Update co-anchor Seth Meyers. Oh, and she was nine months pregnant at the time.
  • A sketch has guest star Garth Brooks considering a Deal with the Devil (Will Ferrell with horns and red face-paint) in exchange for music and lyrics to a hit song to kick-start his pop-music career. The Devil comes up with several songs, only for Brooks to tell him they all suck. Finally, in desperation, Lucifer half-heartedly launches into rap before giving up.
    I'm the Devil, and I'm here to say
    I'm the most evil rapper in the U.S.A.
    All my homies and my bitches, they say "Hey HEY"...
  • Another sketch has Ferrell impersonating Robert Goulet covering a number of rap songs in a "lounge-act" style. His version of Sisqo's "Thong Song" goes "Girl, that dress is so SCANDALOUS... and you know... another NIGGER couldn't handle it!"
  • The Blizzard Man, a recurring character by Andy Samberg's. This rapper is framed as a Living Legend and hired by assorted black artists (usually the musical guest of the episode) to rap on their albums. He comes across as genuine until he starts rapping, where he's an extremely white doofus. Everyone thinks it is awful except the musical guest.
  • Shy Ronnie, also played by Andy Samberg in Digital Shorts. It's hard for a vocalist to be impressive next to Rihanna, but Ronnie is impressively terrible. He looks dorky, stares at the floor, and shuffles awkwardly. His rapping is an unintelligible and near-inaudible mumble into the mic. Rihanna's attempts to encourage him are no help. It is inexplicably Subverted when she leaves: once he is sure Rihanna is gone Ronnie becomes a lot more confident and competent, as if he was keeping his ability a secret from her.
• Monk: Subverted in "Mr. Monk and the Rapper," as Monk tries to deliver the summation for a crowd at a tribute concert. They boo him off the stage, so Murderuss steps on the stage and raps the summation.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway?: This happens a lot, especially with Greg Proops and sometimes Tony Slattery. Then there's Colin Mochrie's shout... singing... style.
  Ryan: I try to rap, I really try
  But I can't 'cause I'm just a white guy.
  • And on at least one glorious occasion, Stephen Fry raps.
  • So does Stephen Colbert.
• Go Rangers, Go Rangers, Go Go Go!
• Lampshaded in Glee's delightfully self-aware Season 2 premiere, when School Newspaper Newshound Jacob informs New Directions leader Will that his rap covers last season were atrocious. Also, whenever a pop song has a rap break, it's usually Artie, the wheelchair-bound nerd, who takes it. Averted by Finn, however. Despite his whiteness and bland singing, he was probably the best at rapping in the group.
• On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart is so appalled by Fox's hypocritical bashing of rap artist Common that he decided to improvise a rap of his own about it.
  Jon: It's beyond a caricature of your own cartoon. I think the only way to get it across would be through a more artful medium, a... more expressive form, perhaps a musical iteration of spoken word... Gimme a beat, yo! (Waits for beat) Drop some beats, yo! (Waits some more, finally just decides to use a metronome)
  • After the commercial break, Jon promises, "I will never rap publicly again."
  • He lied: After Michigan became a "right to work" state he did one in the style of 8 Mile.
• Occasionally on Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, an elderly woman MC called "Nana Rap" would show up to deliver a clue.
• On The Sing-Off, judge Ben Folds was inspired to improvise a freestyle rap while remarking on one group's performance. It went about how you'd expect.
• The little seen Sketch Comedy pilot Next! included a skit with Bob Odenkirk playing a suburban father who fronts a Nu Metal band called The Breadwinnerz — their song is suspiciously similar to Limp Bizkit's "My Way," which even gets referenced by name in the skit.
  • Odenkirk loves this trope. One of the more egregious examples in Mr. Show is in this sketch where Odenkirk's rap consists almost entirely of the word "rap."
• Crispin from Skins. He gets pelted with paper balls by everyone in the room afterwards, deservedly so.
• Barry Williams performed "The Real Greg Brady" (a parody of "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem) at the Billboard Music Awards in 2000.
• Who's in the House? started off as a skit on Dont Feed The Gondolas. It later got a chart release in Ireland and peaked at number 3.
• Bob Odenkirk does this at the beginning of the Mr. Show episode "A Talking Junkie," not too long after he tells David Cross that he's "from the streets" as if it's part of his culture.
• Discussed in one episode of 30 Rock: Betty White talks about how she was in a film with Tracy Jordan about a rapping grandma. He did a great job playing the grandma.
• Sam's rap about a groin injury in Cheers. See for yourself
• Key & Peele:
  • In one, Peele says they can rap. Key objects because they don't have the street cred.
    Keegan-Michael Key: [As Himself] What are we going to rap about, my Master's degree in Fine Arts or your prep school?
  • The rivalry between the football players in the East/West Bowl heats up when the players from the east produce an east coast style Boastful Rap video. It is awkwardly-edited, poorly-performed, and mostly consists of the players introducing themselves. When the players from the west see it, they respond with their own west coast style rap. It has higher production values, but their rapping is just as bad... until Dan Smith the white (and implicitly-Mormon) player from BYU appears. He's amazing.^note The actor is lip-syncing to vocals by Peele, removing any doubt that the rest is Stylistic Suck.
  • A young man at college (Key) receives a video message from his Doting Mother (Peele) where she introduces herself as "MC Mom." She starts rapping with the awkward softness you might expect from a stereotypical Housewife. Her son cringes in embarrassment while his friends tease mercilessly. But the mood changes as she reveals that without his needy ass to take care of, she has time to work on her skills, and proves it with some impressive raps. By the end he sits in Stunned Silence while his friends shout and praise MC Mom's performance.
  • Their PSA from Mr. T ends with him doing a terrible piss-take rap about not making fun of his hair.
• How I Met Your Mother: Robin’s hit song Let's Go to the Mall has a brief rap section. Her friends find it hilarious.
• Community:
  • Dean Pelton intends to deliver one of these, as he dresses up in a peanut-bar costume to sing a cheesy and inoffensive rap to the teachers in apology about how their next paychecks are going to be delayed. It's subverted, however, as he gradually starts getting into it and gets angrier and more passionate, until he's eventually bellowing out a very real and very angry Political Rap about how Obama's education policies are failing the college. And then when he catches himself, he reacts with genuine terror and confusion about what happened and runs away crying. (Incidentally, if the reactions of some of the characters are any indication, apparently even the cast members weren't expecting that to happen.)
  • In the first season finale, a very drunk Professor Duncan takes to the stage at a school event and launches into an awkward impromptu rap before Pelton snatches the microphone out of his hands.
    Prof. Duncan: My name is Ian Duncan and I'm here to say / I'm going to rap to the beat in a rapping way / I've got a real big penis and I drink lots of tea...
• In a flashback episode 9 of You're the Worst, Sam's rap is terrible. Fortunately though, present-day scenes later in the episode show he's improved a lot.
  I'm here
  I think I saw a deer
  I'm about to kill the deer
  And get some meat
  'Cause I'm hungry.
  Everybody talking 'bout they homies
  My chain bling, bling!
  Now these girls owe me...
• 227: In "Rapture" in order to help a teen neighbor during an upcoming history test, Mary and Lester decide to motivate him by rapping. Lester specifies that he hates rap but is willing to do it to help his friend, coming out dressed like Run-DMC (or possibly Sir Mix-a-Lot).
  I never liked this music / I want it off the map
  But to help them pass the test / Even I'm prepared to rap
• Barry from The Goldbergs is a wannabe rapper under the name Big Tasty. His rhyming skills are adequate at best. In one episode he attempts some freestyle rap, but it's just one of his previous raps with awkward rewording.
• Lampshaded in Full House. Jesse and Joey are shot for ideas for a jingle so they try to use a rap idea they had before out of desperation is one of these. After trying it again they realize it was just as bad as when they first came up with it.
• One guy on World's Dumbest... makes this literal by pissing his pants while poorly rapping.
• Drop the Mic (expanded from a segment from The Late Late Show) features plenty of celebrities you would not normally expect to see rap. Many of them hold their own pretty well, though not all.
• On Succession, the grotesquely rich (and very white) Kendall is a fan of hip hop and performs a rap in his father's honor at a black-tie gala. While his delivery is decent, the lyrics are terrible, and the audience is left either laughing in delight or cringing in secondhand embarrassment, especially once he hits the chorus:
  L to the OG
  Dude be the OG
  A-N he playin'
  Playin' like a pro, see
• In the Live-Action Adaptation of The Way of the Househusband, Masa accidentally goes to a rap show hosted by a girl he likes. She spots him in the crowd and calls him up onstage to Battle Rap her. Masa is terrible at it, and is only saved by the sudden arrival of Tatsu, who is a surprisingly good rapper, though all his raps are about househusband stuff.
• In a webisode for The Office (US), Kelly and Erin form a "Girl Group" and use the Dunder-Mifflin office as a set for a music video, wherein Ryan performs a rap bridge - the entire song and video is meant to be Stylistic Suck, but his verse has shades of this trope, as he boasts of being "straight outta Lackawanna" ^note Scranton, the city The Office (US) is set in, is in Lackwanna County, Pennsylvania while wearing Guyliner and an all-white suit and top hat, and inexplicably ends his appearance by grabbing his crotch.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2019) has Count Rapula, a member of Simon the Devious' entourage. After being introduced, he always begins a slow, stilted rap on the current situation until someone makes him stop.
• GLOW (2017): Rhonda, aka. Britannica creates a silly rap chorus for the show, which they use to close out their first live show for the lack of a better closer. Rhonda, though, calls it speech singing "Like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady"
  G.L.O.W., G.L.O.W.
  That's the name
  Women's wrestling is our game
  If we play rough, please don't blame us
  Our style is wild
  And you know you can't tame us
• The 1990 revival of Tic-Tac-Dough was universally panned for many different reasons, however, the icing on the cake was that a few weeks into its short run, the Dragon and Dragonslayer characters ^note The Dragon would wipe out all money accumulated in the bonus round, whereas the Dragonslayer would double it in the Bonus Round would introduce themselves with a brief rap.
  (Dragon) You can play good, you can play long
  If you pick the dragon, all you've got will be gone
  (Dragonslayer) Say yay, say hoorah, say hooray
  If you pick the Dragonslayer, I'll double your pay

Music

• Bush administration advisor Karl Rove became "MC Rove" at the 2008 Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner. Brad Sherwood does most of the heavy lifting here.
  • Similarly, conservative Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli did a karaoke version of "Rapper's Delight" at some local small-town dive. Witnesses say he actually did a great job with it.
• Gothic folk group Current 93 once recorded a rap about Aleister Crowley. Seriously. The version on YouTube is pretty unlistenable, unfortunately.
• Beck has stated that "Loser" is a testament to his inability to rap.
  • According to the story, he was recording in his friend Carl Stephenson's home studio, and improvised nonsensical lyrics based on looking around random objects in Stephenson's kitchen. Stephenson played the recording back to him, and he realised he was so bad he started sarcastically singing "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me". The song was finished in about six hours and was Beck forced to release it because of his label Bong Load Records. The rest is history.
• The Gourds' cover of "Gin and Juice". You know, the one that people online claim was performed by Phish or Blues Traveler. Interestingly enough, Phish does in fact rap to Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It"
• Grindcore bands Magrudergrind and 7000 Dying Rats released Heavier Bombing and We Want Weez-E respectively, which made for strange breaks in the midst of albums composed mainly of music that can be described as Hardcore Punk on speed and steroids.
• Madonna's rap in her 2003 single "American Life." As cringeworthy as it sounds.
  • Well, not many complained about her earlier rap in "Vogue"
• Mick Jagger does this in a few The Rolling Stones songs like "Too Much Blood" or "Emotional Rescue".
• Brave Saint Saturn's "The Shadow of Def". It starts off as a slow, acoustic rap song, then it gets even cheesier when the executive producer drops some guest rhymes in the bridge.
• The Edge sort of does this in "Numb".
• "Dead on It", Prince's riff on hip-hop from the untitled black album. Ironically, despite heavily railing on the genre in the song, Prince would end up at least partly embracing hip-hop throughout his 90's work.
• The White Stripes do this in "Icky Thump" (on the subject of American hypocrisy about Mexican immigration):
  Who's using who?
  What should we do?
  Well you can't be a pimp
  And a prostitute too.
• Barenaked Ladies did this in their concert at Radio City Music Hall on August 13, 2010, and possibly at other concerts during that tour. They pulled it off VERY well.
  • Pinch Me is somewhat of a rap around the chorus, so this one is not completely unexpected, but still pretty surprising.
  • BnL does this a LOT in concert. It's kind of a gimmick of theirs. Word of God has it that their breakout hit "One Week" was their first attempt to put it on an album, and the song was written in about 5 minutes of ad libbing.
  • An abbreviated cover of Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" appeared on a 1991 demo commonly referred to as The Yellow Tape. They'd subsequently do a full 4 minute version for the 1993 movie Coneheads.
• Liz Phair raps to an Indian-styled beat on "Bollywood". Coming from an album called Funstyle...
• A Hidden Track on Relient K's Two Lefts Don't Make A Right... But Three Do album features "the world's worst freestyle rapper, ever."
  If apples are green and carrots are orange,
  And then you go, and then you go...
  What the — wait, what rhymes with 'orange?'
  Aw, jeez, I really am bad...
• The last person on the planet you'd expect to be a talented rapper is perhaps "Weird Al" Yankovic, who fulfills the "White and Nerdy" stereotype in so many ways, but he's been praised for his skills.
• Steven Curtis Chapman's song Got To B Tru.
• "Blackout" by Linkin Park. Now wait, how can a band that's well-known for fusing rock and hip-hop by having a competent rapper/producer in their ranks possibly be here? Well, when it's their Bono/Scott Weiland-esque lead singer, Chester Bennington, rapping and screaming at the same time, it falls under this trope.
  • Linkin Park also has two Piss-Take Reggae songs, with Mike Shinoda's toasted vocals in "Waiting for the End" and the aforementioned Chester Bennington's half-screamed, half-toasted vocals in "Wretches and Kings". Then again, the three songs are all from their fourth album, A Thousand Suns, which is definitely more experimental than anything the band ever made before.
• Heavy Metal band Clutch did a rap song called "Careful With That Mic..." that's actually pretty damn good, but certainly falls in this category.
• Anthrax were probably one of the first to do this in the mid 80s with "I'm the Man." They would later cover/duet Public Enemy's "Bring The Noise" ^note the vocal track from the original version was sampled with Public Enemy's blessing, but Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian takes a verse for himself and cover Beastie Boys (along with remaking I'm The Man ('91)).
• Rush did one of these on the title track of their album Roll the Bones. Surprisingly, that's still Geddy Lee singing, just modified to the point of being nigh-unrecognizable.
  • Raising the pitch (drastically) using audio editing software reveals that he's basically speaking the rap, in a manner similar to a later Rush song (Double Agent, from Counterparts).
• About any time that OFWGKTA's Taco or Jasper steps up to the mic, this happens. In "Tina," Taco spends roughly 6 of his 8 bars enjoying potato chips. Very loudly.
• Saosin's "Show Me Yo Bootyhole" satirizes the overwhelmingly hypersexual nature of most mainstream rap/hip-hop.
• K-On!: Afternoon Tea Time does this on "Fuwa Fuwa Time". Helps that the music background sounds close to something Nu Metal-esque:
  But that's the biggest problem, ya see
  'Cause then I'll need to think of a topic to speak
  And it ain't gonna be natural for me
  To do that in the first place, I think
• Taylor Swift herself did a rap with T-Pain.
  • The rap interlude in "Shake It Off", which is more of a cheerleader chant than actual rapping.
• The Veronicas song, Popular is also this besides the fact it is a parody of Boastful Rap's too.
• Mike Read once did a 10 minute political rap at a Conservative Party Conference, much to David Mitchell's disgust
• Avril Lavigne's "Nobody's Fool" is this.
• Cracker's "What You're Missing", which is full of silly in-jokes and also gives every member of the band a verse. Word of God is it was initially inspired by funk though, specifically the group War. As a sample, here's drummer Frank Funaro's verse, rapped in a heavy Brooklyn accent:
  If you need some riddem
  Den I'm the man for you
  If you got a sister, well
  I'm da man for her too
  I may not be a singer
  But I play one on TV
  I wrote myself some lyrics
  Wid a rhyming dictionary
• "The Bends" by Radiohead has a few seconds of Thom Yorke doing this:
  I'm just lying in a bar with my drip feed on
  Talking to my girlfriend
  Waiting for something to happen
  And I wish it was the '60s
  I wish we could be happy
  I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen
• As part of a series of songs done under the guises of various fake bands, They Might Be Giants wrote the song "Too + 3 R One" in the style of a Boy Band, complete with John Linnell doing a surreal rap bridge:
  Do the math, girl
  And let me tell you why I never need a bath, girl
  'Cause I'm covered in foam
  I got my homes
  I'm never lonely, there's an extra hand for my ice cream cone, yeah
  I got poise like a star
  There's no room in the car
  And if it looks like rain
  Get underneath my massive brain
• The intro to "Radio Brennt" by Die Ärzte.
  ETWAS RAPDISZIPLIN WENN ICH BITTEN DARF!
• Tina Fey rapping on Childish Gambino's "Real Estate". Yeah...
• This is basically the whole point of Professor Elemental. Despite being a pretty solid rapper, he cultivates the deliberately silly image of a Victorian-period dandy, and raps about tea and crumpets.
  • He decided to do a piss take album of "rap through the ages". Quite unexpectedly, his Victorian-age piss take became such a huge hit with the steampunk crowd that it spawned a whole new career, and indeed, a whole new genre of music.
• This is a frequent venture for Tally Hall. See: "Welcome to Tally Hall", the bridge of "Ruler of Everything," and their covers of Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" and Flo Rida's "Club Can't Handle Me" with Casey Shea.
• The Aquabats! feature this trope in a few of their songs, such as "Pool Party!" and "Hey Homies!"
• "Down In It" by Nine Inch Nails. Enough said.
• Froggy Fresh (formerly Krispy Kreme) of YouTube fame is basically all about this trope. Video content aside, most his humor in the songs themselves seems to revolve around bad, awkwardly written lyrics, as opposed to playing the exaggerated Pretty Fly for a White Guy angle.
  I had to fight my whole life
  I could beat you up, even if you had one thousand knives
  Even if you had infinity knives!
  I would punch you up into the air like a kite
• Morris Minor and the Majors: They once charted with "The Stutter Rap". Four rappers named after a British car that wasn't even trendy back in the 1950's. All with stutters. It was not meant to be serious.
• Weezer dipped into this in their genre-jumping single "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived", in which the band tried to squeeze eleven distinct styles/artist parodies into a six-minute song. How do you think it turned out?
• Say Anything...'s... laid back... cover of Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Got Your Money" dives straight into this.
• P.D.Q. Bach composed "Classical Rap," in which the singer complains over a chamber orchestra accompaniment about the hardships of life in the big city... on the affluent Upper West Side.
• Ed Kowalczyk did this during the bridge of Live's song "Like a Soldier", making references to Pizza Hut, Ray's Pizza, Starbucks and Ralph Nader. Yes, really.
• An early version (and in German no less) is the cover/parody rap of The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight by GLS-United - Rapper´s Deutsch, where three German radio D.J.s "rap" about the music of their decade each.
• Darrell Hammond and Christopher Snell's "Wappin'" is presented as an attempt to get with the times by Elmer Fudd.
  You let all this success go stwaight to youw head
  But it's fattened you up, so I'll be well fed!
  You'we a dwied-up, scwewy ol', fat Welsh wabbit
  With a two-thousand-dollaw-a-day cawwot habit!
• The Lonely Island's "Shy Ronnie" songs (who, as the name hints at, is shy) and songs performed by "Just Two Guys", who are bored to death. Played with in the case of Shy Ronnie, as his two songs also feature Rihanna, and Shy Ronnie seems to only be shy around her specifically - whenever Rihanna leaves the room, his rapping is suddenly much more clear and confident, only to die back down to an unintelligible mumble the moment she returns.
• Rappin' Duke ^note  real name Shawn Brown with his eponymous One-Hit Wonder single from 1984: 6 minutes of spoofing Boastful Rap in a John Wayne impression, with the hook being a rhythmic approximation of Wayne's distinctive laugh ("da-haw, da-haw, da-ha-ha-ha-ha-haw"). Now possibly better known for a semi-Shout-Out in The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy" (Biggie seemed to be referencing it as an example of how the public didn't take hip hop seriously at first).
• Shaquille O'Neal is an aversion, as he was actually a very good rapper who actually had three RIAA-certified albums, and two top-40 singles. Most younger fans who look up his music expect it to be bad, only to be surprised by O'Neal's lyrical skill.
• Unknown P is somewhat of an interesting case, in that he started out as, and indeed still is, a parody rapper character (Drill Music BUT POSH!!), however his creator, comedian Munya Chawawa, was actually a good enough rapper for 'Unknown P' to land a record deal with Atlantic.
• Eminem is also an interesting case — he's without a doubt one of the most technically accomplished rappers to have ever picked up a microphone, viewed as a great songwriter for "Lose Yourself" and "Stan", and came up through an authentic street-level hip-hop scene with a nod of credibility from Dr. Dre. However, much of his music is humorous and based on mocking genre conventions; singing along to his own disc-scratching and providing vocal sound effects, parodying the flows of different rappers he dislikes, indulging in satirical beefs with drippy pop stars, arguing with himself about his own lyrics, making fun of the violent excesses of Gangsta Rap via the stupid boasts of his vile idiot Anti-Role Model alter-ego Slim Shady, provoking Moral Guardians by claiming to have invented violence, starting his Greatest Hits compilation with a grossout song about shoving a gerbil up his ass, and actually recording the sound of him taking a crap (while talking through an electrolarynx for some odd reason) and putting it on an album. (Listing everything ridiculous Eminem has done on a song would take up the entire page.) Like many others on this page, Eminem is white — his gimmicky style evolved in part because he had to be the most attention-grabbing guy in the room just to get his black audiences on his side, and in part because being a white rapper already cast him as a joke anyway.
• Like Eminem above, Beastie Boys are critically-acclaimed white rappers who developed a ridiculous, clownish style due to their geeky personalities and unintimidating looks. The Beasties used depraved frat-boy personas inspired by pro-wrestling heels, because they were all extremely inoffensive-looking white nerds who could never be taken seriously as rappers otherwise. However, their music sought to parody the Testosterone Poisoning stupidity of Glam Metal rather than hip-hop, meaning black hip-hop fans had time for them as they were making fun of white people, and white rock fans could relate to the jokes. Unfortunately, they attracted a significant Misaimed Fandom of real-life evil frat boys who didn't get the joke, even with the videos of them throwing cream pies everywhere — something they spent the rest of their careers attempting to reject.
• The stems for "Video Killed The Radio Star" by The Buggles contain an unused rap by Trevor Horn and Hans Zimmer, in which they warn listeners to "lock up your grandmother". Weirdly, some of the lyrics point to it being recorded well after the rest of the song, possibly as an in-joke that was never meant to see the light of day: Zimmer's lyrics include boasts about scoring hit films, which he hadn't started to do as of 1979; What's more baffling is that Horn's lyrics include the line "step up in the party like my name is Mr. T" - not only would Mr. T himself not be a well-known name in the UK for a few more years, but this exact line appears in Will.i.am's guest verse to Nicki Minaj's "Check It Out", a 2010 single that sampled "Video Killed The Radio Star".

Podcasts

• RiffTrax has the "Fast and Furious Rap", surprisingly well matched with the background music as Vin Diesel wanders through a nightclub.
  Kevin Murphy: We got Vin for the win in the girl pile
  Slappin' Vinny in the head Benny Hill-style
  A bit later
  He gonna date her
  And maybe get a little in the elevator
  Vin's a hi-speed tough guy loner
  Gonna go and shoot the club owner
  He's trying hard to fight off a boner
  Gonna drink a little warm...Corona!
  Mike Nelson: Kevin... here's $100. Never attempt to rap again.

Print Media

• MAD Magazine's "Mad Raps Up Shakespeare" ("I'm Will-the-Thrill, the Stratford ace...") from the late 1980s. Probably not the Trope Maker, but close enough.

Pro Wrestling

• John Cena's first actual gimmick started this way when he rapped at a SmackDown! Halloween Party. It morphed into a full-fledged Pretty Fly for a White Guy and eventually into a semi-serious gimmick which continued during his first world title reign, releasing a full album along the way.
  • Cena can rap, and has been into the music since his adolescence growing up in the 1990s (when he was mocked and attacked by other white kids in his neighborhood for liking the music). He just pretended to be this kind of rapper when he was a heel. Just listen to the better tracks on his hip-hop album You Can't See Me, where he raps with friends Marc Predka and Freddie Fox, and you might be surprised at how well their voices go together.
• About half the people who feud with or are in the same room as the aforementioned rapper Cena or with R-Truth end up pulling this. Expect some form of "rap isn't hard, I can do that" followed by a "freestyle" verse. Notable examples include Brian "Spanky" Kendrick, The Big Show and Christian for Cena as well as Ted DiBiase Jr.. and William Regal for R-Truth.
• GLOW used to have raps done by many of the wrestlers as part of their entrance theme. Some were down-right cringeworthy.
• The Road Warriors Rap.
• For the American Wrestling Association's 1986 Supercard "WrestleRock 86" they released the WrestleRock Rumble rap. Jim Cornette said it may have been the worst thing he'd ever seen.
  • Worth noting that the only wrestler on that promo that actually had decent rapping skills was Nick Bockwinkel, an old school wrestler who was in his fifties at the time!
  • Scott Hall, Curt Hennig, and Larry Zybysko (all heels) also turn in decent performances. Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty are noticeably bad for a team called the Midnight Rockers.
• Kaval's rap on NXT was better than most examples, had the audience's approval and is fondly remembered long after the fact but it is clear he hadn't put much thought into what he actually wanted to say and wasn't used to rapping.

Theatre

• Keating! The Musical features a rap battle between Paul Keating and Dr. John Hewson over Hewson's proposed GST.
• Car Talk: The Musical ends with the middle-aged white protagonist doing a deliberately ridiculous rap titled "Don't Drive Like My Brother."
• The Doonesbury musical had President Reagan rapping his message to black voters. This inspired the show's creators to write a Spiritual Successor political revue titled Rap Master Ronnie.
  Reagan: Smokin'! We're in a grove now.
  Ed: That's groove, sir.
• The Complete History of America (Abridged), by the Reduced Shakespeare Company, features one about the settlement of America by the British, from Jamestown to the colonies.
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), also by the Reduced Shakespeare Company has a terrible rap of Othello, which they somehow decide is least unfortunate way to present the play while being "melanin challenged".
  There once was a brother by the name of Othello / He liked white women and he liked... green... jello.

Video Games

• Brütal Legend: Kabbage Boy has this, though on purpose.
• The DK Rap, from Donkey Kong 64. And it's back again, and about time too, in Super Smash Bros. Melee, sounding less like a rap song.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has OG Loc, who actually manages to have a rap career despite being a horrible rapper, mainly by having CJ sabotage his rivals.
• Hypnospace Outlaw: Counselor Ronnie's horrible rap about birthstones is this taken to the extreme. Ronnie pronounces the words all wrong (pronouncing ruby as "roob-why", for one) and even says "periscope" instead of "peridot". The Stylistic Suck nature of this rap is actually intentional: Counselor Ronnie is an Invented Individual by a hacker group to see how bad they could make his content before people took notice of it.
• In the final rap battle against DK West in No Straight Roads, Mayday takes charge and her inexperience relative to him and Zuke shows. While not horrible, it's not very on beat or flows well, mostly sounding like her hastily sing-talking an argument to reassure DK that Zuke still cares for and respects him as a brother despite what Zuke said in the previous battle to get West to actually listen to Zuke instead of antagonizing him.
• The schoolkids' rap in Not for Broadcast. "Hey listen up! I won't take no crap / Who said middle-class girls can't rap? / I ain't afraid o' your cruel cruel laughs / I'm a mother-lovin' rebel but I still love maths..."
• In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Gym Leader Ryme is also a rapper, and after effortlessly beating a would-be-challenger criticizes his choice of words:
  Ryme: "After my next shift"? Seriously? Bars over jokes, come on!
• Rhythm Heaven Fever has the Love Rap, which consists entirely of the rappers using various alterations on the phrase "Into you!" (and "Fo sho'!"). It's pretty cheesy, but it's made clear that this is deliberate.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Sam & Max do this in episode 203, "Night of the Raving Dead". They have to beat the villain Jurgen in a contest. They win mostly not by being particularly cool but making their opponent particularly uncool.
• Splatoon 2: During the Octo Expansion, Captain Cuttlefish tries to write his own raps. They aren't very good.
  Cap'n Cuttlefish: My name is Cuttlefish, but I don't cuddle with fish. My only wish is for a delicious dish.
  Pearl: Maybe stick that one back in the oven, cap.
• The "Rap Battle" segment in Tomodachi Life. Both competitor Miis accurately call out the other Mii's abilities.
• Yooka-Laylee had a silly rap made for it as a nod to the DK64 rap. A lizard and a bat, what's up with that?

Visual Novels

• Lily's Night Off has one of these in one of its multiple endings, as seen here. The performer is a talented idol girl trying (and failing) something that's both out-of-genre and confessing a personal secret.

Web Animation

• Weebl's character DJ Pie Safety.
• Coach Z from Homestar Runner fancies himself a rapper (in fact, one of his old bios implied that he was a chart-topping superstar back in whatever country he originally came from), but he's usually shown to be a Dreadful Musician. "Loading Screens" and "Fish Eye Lens" are the only times he's demonstrated any clear talent. "These Peoples Try to Fade Me" counts as a piss take for many listeners, and it's still a big step up from his usual efforts.
• Inanimate Insanity: At one point in "Let 'er R.I.P.", Lightbulb does this as a response to a question about the Calm Down Corner.
  Lightbulb: I mean, it wouldn't be that bright to get real uptight, We're in a creepy crazy mansion, and fans got a lotta fright! WORD.
• Spade does this in Modern Objects. He names the song My Name Is Spade. The song is complete with Map as an awful DJ. However, Spade soon stops rapping, becomes sad and realizes that he is actually a horrible rapper.
• My Little Pony in a Nutshell: Silverstream delivers a diss rap to an illusion of the Storm King in "What Lies Beneath", all in the videos' usual text-to-speech program.

Webcomics

• Homestuck has a few characters with enthusiasm for rapping. That does not mean they are good at it.
  • Dave Strider is one of the most frequent offenders, rapping to his friends at such length that they put their devices down and ignore him.
  • Tavros Nitram responds to Dave with a rap of his own (that is even worse). He seems satisfied with the "sick fires" he started, unaware that no-one listened.
  • Equius Zahhak raps after Dave encourages him. To Dave's surprise, this "poetry" is technically proficient. It is also aligned to Equius' peculiar tastes, which are disturbing.
  • Gamzee Makara is worse than his idols. A collaboration between himself and Tavros is relegated offscreen, but the narration deems it one of the worst rap-offs in the history of Paradox Space.
  • In contrast, Tavros and Dave have an Offscreen Moment of Awesome that we are assured is one of the best rap-offs in the history of Paradox Space. Of course, considering the rest, that might be Damned by Faint Praise.
  • Dave's paradox clone brother, Dirk. He is even more entrenched in "ironic" rapping than Dave and uses it in battle to make his overcomplicated Sylladex jettison items at foes — or his friendly robot companions.
  • Dirk's robots Squarewave and Sawtooth, an example and an aversion respectively. Squarewave is built to be a sparring partner in a rap battle, so his rhymes and beats are pretty weak. Sawtooth is built to be unbeatable in a rap battle. We don't see him throw down, but Dirk admits he has never beaten Sawtooth.
• In Men in Hats, Beriah and Jeriah's freestyle rap-off ends with an awkward Beat Panel after Beriah begins, "Yo, I come from the hood... of my car!"
• Sketch Comedy: Paul Kennedy and Independent Music James are in it to win it like Dennis Kucinich.
• Implied in The Draw Play about Nick Foles' rap attempt; the last panel has two Rams players incinerating all copies of Foles' EP and agreeing to Let Us Never Speak of This Again.

Web Videos

• LittleKuriboh announced his return to Youtube with "Without Yugi". Several other abridgers responded in kind.
• Game Grumps: Arin and Dan are practiced vocalists and musicians, and their other projects prove them adept rappers. Presumably those were times they took care to write and rehearse their rapping. The show is not one of those times. When either of them breaks out in intentionally-half-assed freestyle rap, it tends to be amusingly bad.
  Arin: Anyway, 'd you like my rap?
  Dan: Yeah, I loved it. Really, really good.
  Arin: Give me another [...] rap topic.
  Dan: I'll try to give you something that's really easy to rhyme. Uhh... "cake."
  Arin: "Cake," alright: [raps] Yo everybody, here's my story, / I really like cake! [hesitates] And my name's Rory!
  Dan: God, [sigh] Arin...
• This trope is a staple of NoPixel and its many rapper characters, particularly Yung Dab (with his main issues being Stock Rhymes, scansion and clichés such as “My name’s [X] and I’m here to say”), though his songs are still viewed very favorably in-universe.
• Cracked's Michael Swaim does an intentionally bad rap in his "Rap About Rape" episode of Does Not Compute, which is surprising when there's a video of him doing an actually decent rap.
• Kyle "Oancitizen" Kallgren finishes off his Brows Held High review of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai with a rap number. The Rap Critic admits it was actually pretty good.
• This dude.
• This Public Service Announcement by Nadia Kamil, urging women to get screened for cervical cancer.
• Let's not forget T-Dub.
• Neil Patrick Harris had a brief rap in his song for Commentary! The Musical. He quickly decides, "No, I can't rap. That was... painful."
• The infamous Rappin' for Jesus video, featuring a youth pastor and his wife performing a corny Christian rap song, including the infamous line:
  Pastor: So I gave my sermon an urban kick,
  My rhymes are fly, my beats are sick,
  My crew is big and it keeps getting bigga,
  That's cuz Jesus Christ is my nigga
• Auralnauts Star Wars: In "Banana Time", Kylo Ren is the galaxy’s most successful rap artist, but only because he relies on his helmet’s computer to proofread all his songs. Take the helmet off, and his unfiltered freestyling is so unspeakably bad that Han Solo literally dies from listening to it.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, Finn does a political rap to help rile up the demons of the Nightosphere out of their apathy. Somehow, it works.
  One of the demons: I never thought of it that way before.
• The Amazing World of Gumball:
  • "The Sock" has the school councellor Mr. Small's rap about Honesty.
  • "The Brain" has a cashier performing an entire rap about dill pickles, which makes Nicole, who is the one buying them, ashamed.
• Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force steals the identity of Public Enemy and tries to compose his own Christmas rap. He's entirely off beat, and his voice doesn't help either.
• BoJack Horseman implies that the titular celebrity did this during The '90s. Mercifully, it is not shown: in flashback, one of the crew of the Show Within a Show implies they will let BoJack rap if they can think of a follow-up to the opening line "My name is BoJack Horseman and I'm here to say:".
• Grandpa Freeman's rap rebuttal to Thugnificent on The Boondocks.
• The Cleveland Show: Black and Nerdy Cleveland Jr shocks Kenny West with a surprisingly catchy gangster rap in rebuttal to Kenny's mockery.
• Clone High has Gandhi's attempts at rap. His signature song consists primarily of repeating "G-Spot rocks the g-spot! G-Spot rocks the g-spot!", which he is thoroughly convinced is a clever rhyme. Inexplicably, most people consider him a lyrical genius.
• Dexter's Laboratory, in its' infamous Christmas Episode "Dexter vs. Santa's Claws", has Dexter perform a rap number on what really happens at their house on Christmas Eve, and naturally he's not very good at such rapping and rhyming, with hilarious results...
  "WORD! Hooooooooooo!
  Dad dresses up in a Santa getup
  And then he puts the car up on the rooftoop!
  He makes the car look like a sleigh, here,
  And Mom dresses up just like a reindeer!
  She greases up Dad so he'll slide down the chimney,
  And put all our presents around the tree!
  Then Mom pulls him up, and by and by,
  They drive down the roof and into the sky!
  You go to the window 'cause you heard a little sound,
  And see Santa fly by before they all hit the ground!
  Everybody say, hooooooooooo! Yeah!
• Futurama, "Where No Fan Has Gone Before". William Shatner performs "The Real Slim Shady" in his own unique style.
  Walter Koenig: How can you do a spoken-word version of a rap song?
  Melllvar: He found a way.
• The Kim Possible episode "Rappin' Drakken" has two examples; Drakken's "Lather, Rinse, Obey" (used to advertise his brain-washing shampoo) and Ron Stoppable's "Naked Mole Rap".
• The Pixies of The Fairly OddParents! Dull, boring, love the color gray, wear pointy hats, have square heads, and use cell phones and pixels instead of wands. They are the absolute opposite of the Fairies, who resemble mythical, fun filled creatures, while Pixies are businessmen. Every one of their musical appearances features them rapping. Subverted in "School's Out: The Musical" where their raps are done by Method Man and Red and are awesome.
• Darkstalkers: Lord Raptor's demo tape.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Testing, Testing, 1 2 3", Pinkie Pie tries to help Rainbow Dash get ready for a written exam with the Rappin' Hist'ry of the Wonderbolts, which is even presented as a 90s-style rap video complete with 4:3 aspect ratio and fake VCR effects.
• The Powerpuff Girls (2016): In "Once Upon a Townsville", Buttercup busts out a cheesy rap number in an effort to convince Princess Bluebelle to be more independent and not wait around for her Prince Charming.
• Rick and Morty gives us "The Flu Hatin' Rap", which is what happens when someone with absolutely zero rap talent tries to make up a rap on the spot. It must be heard to be believed.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer's first idea to promote himself as Mr. Plow. Bart, Lisa, and even the family cat find it painful. It's the standard late 1980s Straw Rap that features the lyrics of "I'm [Name] and I'm here to say / I'm the [most exemplary of my profession] in the U.S.A.!", and Homer's rap "poses" look more like disco dancing.
  • Another episode in which Bart tries to go to a rap concert features Homer and Marge rapping (badly) to him that he can't go.
• VeggieTales:
  • Khalil's cameo appearance in the Belly Button song.
  • And the Scallions during the Salesmunz (or Stuff Mart) Rap in Madame Blueberry.
• On the Wander over Yonder episode "The Showstopper", Lord Hater is doing a heavy metal concert to try and impress Lord Dominator. When Peepers points out that Dominator might not be into heavy metal, Hater busts out a rap instead.

Real Life

• In a lecture at the 2015 Edinburgh Science Festival, "Thinking Outside the Brain", Dr. Peter Lamont mentioned that his occasional attempts to look younger than he was were as embarrassing as if a middle-aged, white, psychology professor were to attempt a rap. This was, of course, a lead in...

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