Maybe you were lucky enough to forget about Mary J. Blige’s commercial for Burger King’s Crispy Chicken. But now, two years later, Busta Rhymes has done the unthinkable: he’s shilling for Toyota by lending his voice and credibility to a lovely white rapping, Soulja Boy Superman-ing suburban family and their #SwaggerWaggon. The result just hurts our heart:
Maybe we can get the potato salad kickstarter guy to share some of the wealth with Busta because this is just sad.
Team Blackness also discussed independent media spaces, Google Play’s new Bomb Gaza game, and the GOP’s worry about the “War on Whites.”
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Punchy
I managed to get thru 54 seconds. If anyone can top that, more power to ya. That’s more brutal than a Cubs/White Sox game. Plus cacophonous than Dick Vitale’s voice overlaid on top of Chris Berman and Joe Buck’s.
Mnemosyne
Why does Toyota have such craptastic commercials? They were the ones who had the series with the kid sitting in the back seat whining about how his parents’ car wasn’t cool enough for him to be driven around in.
brent
Meh. That wasn’t so bad. The ad was pretty slick IMO and hey, everybody’s gotta eat. Busta Rhymes more than most it seems. (Dude has to have gained like 150 pounds, a lot of it muscle obviously, since Native Tongues.)
Face
OK, that video was filled with whites clearly acting like black rappers. Out of stupid curiosity, what would be the caricatured (stereotyped) example of the opposite of that, where a black family would act like white singers? Would they be strumming banjoes while dipping chaw? Karaoke’ing at a Long John Silvers while dressed in Old Navy? Sipping Old Style in between guitar riffs?
tsquared2001
In the immortal words of Rasheed Wallace – CTC. Okay, maybe not words but you get me
Amir Khalid
I guess the hippety-hop is so mainstream these days that people no longer think of this kind of thing as cultural appropriation. Although it’s at thjat awkward stage of assimilation, where white people still look goofy doing it.
rk
@Punchy:
I saw exactly 12 seconds and I was done. The silly girl and the hand gesture was the limit of my tolerance. You deserve an award for lasting 54 seconds.
tsquared2001
@Face: The Cosby family singing a Journey song. No, singing a Chicago song.
Amir Khalid
@rk:
I watched it all the way to the end. What do I win?
rea
I guess that’s the rapper rather than the football player of the same name (particularly given the football player’s ’04 conviction for carjacking).
ruemara
Something tells me that I will survive not watching this.
tsquared2001
@Amir Khalid: Years ago, I was watching the Breeder’s Cup with my brother and he got SO pissed when the winning jockey did the raise the roof gesture. Motherfuckers steal everything.
SatanicPanic, flagrant Muzlatto frapparoon of indeterminate gentrification
@Amir Khalid: Plenty of non-awkward white people doing it- Eminem, MGK, etc. This ad is just a sign to me that certain white people are still trying to maintain the notion that hip-hop isn’t “real” music. Because no guitars, or something.
Ben Cisco
@SatanicPanic, flagrant Muzlatto frapparoon of indeterminate gentrification: Yeah, it’s the lack of guitars.
SURE THAT’S WHY…
Also, awesome name change.
greennotGreen
Isn’t it just supposed to be a joke? So obviously wrong for the suburban so-white-they-shine-at-night family? In the vein of the famous (at least to me) SNL skit The Young Caucasians with Ray Charles (scroll down.)
Of course, it’s not a good ad because it associates the car with an extremely dorky family that would make me want to move if they lived next door.
Josie
It’s the sort of thing you can’t quit watching because you can’t guess how bad it is going to get – sort of like a slow motion train wreck. It is, interestingly enough, Japanese and displays the same dissonance that was in the you tube video someone posted earlier entitled Baby Metal. As my son said when he watched it, they have their own way of looking at things.
FlyingToaster
@Amir Khalid: Me too. But I own the 2007 version of the product advertised (the Sienna, not the radio). I don’t need to win anything unless someone’s got the Koch brothers’ money, which I’ll happily take charge of redistributing to the masses.
I never see car commercials on TV anymore; now I know why. Yewwwwwwwww. If it weren’t such a useful kid-car (it’s carried 5 adults, a baby in a carseat + gear, an urban assault stroller, and a cello in a hard case; as well as one adult and 6 kids and beach gear; or worse, 5 loads of stuff emptied out of my friend’s mom’s basement), I wouldn’t drive a Sienna.
brent
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think I would have ever considered this kind of ironic presentation cultural appropriation exactly. I mean, there are certainly some cultural issues there but the “target” of that ad, such as it is, is the lameness of suburban culture and its pretty self aware.
Everyone commenting so far seems sort of mortified by it, but I actually found it fairly clever and I am not someone with much tolerance for this sort of “check it out, white people can rap too” sort of thing. It clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a few interesting and creative flourishes.
SatanicPanic, flagrant Muzlatto frapparoon of indeterminate gentrification
@Ben Cisco: Oops, looks like I forgot about my cookies. That was Chyron HR’s description of Pajama Boy yesterday, it was genius so I stole it
Cervantes
About this:
Er … I beg your pardon.
srv
Obama’s 2nd Cousin Radiologist is pulling ahead in Kansas
Indeed.
Suffern ACE
@tsquared2001: Not nice. Chicago in the 70s was a grand fine group. I’m thinking Lutheran church music – songs of praise about God’s joyful glory sung as if the congregation has just finished marching 40 miles through the desert.
Ben Cisco
@SatanicPanic, flagrant Muzlatto frapparoon of indeterminate gentrification: Missed that, but it is indeed genius.
srv
I think this commercial proves that the white folks have lost the war.
grrljock
@brent: Yes, this is SUPPOSED to be a joke. Toyota’s been using the “Swagger Wagon” tag for its Sienna for some time now. Commercials for the Sienna make fun of its uncool-yet-so-useful status, which seems to work.
Re: song use in commercials, remember all the white people who were outraged when The Beatles’ “Revolution” was used in a Nike ad?
Keith G
The magic of the market place.
tsquared2001
@Suffern ACE: I have only been in a Lutheran church once but damn if that “finished marching 40 miles through the desert” didn’t describe that experience.
Okay. I’ll switch out Chicago for Boston. That’s fair.
Keith G
@Cervantes: It’s a game paid for by America’s tax payers.
Mwangangi
What’s with the link?
Cervantes
@Keith G: What is it, though? I have not the foggiest.
Amir Khalid
In the end, that video is just an amusing car commercial. NRA News Commentators Episode 84: Firearms and The Blind is something else again.
I don’t believe anyone could outdo what Stevie Wonder had to say about this: “Imagine me with a gun. It’s just crazy.”
tsquared2001
@srv: Funny.
Ted Mills
Ah! That explains why my Twitter was full of comments about BustaRhymes suggesting he had died. I guess they were just talking about his reputation.
Too bad, bc last year’s single with Q-Tip was so so good.
Amir Khalid
@grrljock:
It was Michael Jackson, not any of the Beatles, who sold the use of the song to Nike. Jacko had outbid Paul for ownership of the Northern Songs catalogue, which led to something of a falling-out between them. The blowback from that Nike ad was fierce enough that he didn’t manage to sell any other songs for ads, at least none that I can recall.
SatanicPanic, flagrant Muzlatto frapparoon of indeterminate gentrification
@Amir Khalid: But what if someone jumps on top of you and tries to rape you? Do you need to see them? In this highly likely scenario, you just need to start blasting!
pamelabrown53
@Amir Khalid: “I watched all the way to the end. What do I win”?
I’ll sponsor a fund drive for a super sized container of Smoothie Tums. Will that work?
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: The way I heard it back in ’85 was not that McCartney was outbid but rather that he and Ono, not believing that the rights were worth more than the minimum startIng bid, declined to make any bid at all.
Mike J
@tsquared2001:
The point of this commercial is that the white family isn’t cool enough to listen to rap.
The white equivalent would be Neko Case.
rikyrah
Busta Busta Busta…
uh uh uh
Dee Loralei
The commercial cracked me up, obviously tongue in cheek.
Paul in KY
@Face: Check out some old Lawrence Welk shows for ideas.
Cassidy
Eh, Busta is getting paid. Good for him.
Joel
Busta lost his shit when being a homophobic dickhead was no longer cool.
tsquared2001
@Mike J: Who the hell is Neko Case? Did you make up that name? Sounds fake to me.
DTGstl314
@brent:
I think the producers were probably going for a “so horrifically bad that it’s good” feel with it. The fact that we’re here even commenting on it in the first place (as I’m sure are many others elsewhere) means it worked to a certain extent. Bad press is better than no press.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
I was all set to defend Busta Rhymes here but I started playing that video and… I can’t even.
Honest, I think that earnest crappy white rapping of the late 1980s (imitating Sugar Hill Gang because we white folk gotta be waaaayyyy behind the trends, nothing whiter than that–see Hipsters who turn it into some sort of exaggerated mating signal) was better. Oh, and get off my lawn, Toyota.
randomworker
@tsquared2001: More like the Robert L Johnson family singing Aerosmith Toys in the Attic.
DTGstl314
Google has removed the game from the Play Store. It is worth noting that Google didn’t actually create the game or upload it to the store, but it is fair to say they ought to tighten up their app review process (assuming they even have one) to keep crap like that from showing up in the first place.
tsquared2001
@randomworker: No telling with the Johnson family – they might like them some Aerosmith. Talk about a bougie family
Tone In DC
Elon and Team Blackness, I drive a Toyota and I know pointing and laughing can and does happen.
I think it’s way too easy to make fun of this ad. I remember MC Hammer dancing in a KFC ad years ago. I cringed, cursed in fluent kangaroo and changed the channel.
Having said that, to me, the Congress’ g00per-induced, irretrievable and continuing insanity is much more of a story than Busta Rhymes’ ad. /end rant
Keep up the great work.
kc
@Cervantes:
Not as important as “cultural appropriation,” obv.
Cervantes
@kc: ?