Rolfe's Ramblings

 

Putting out a skillful musical number for a children's TV show instead of a throwaway tune is pretty great, and there have been a lot of Sesame Street sketches featuring some absolute genius artists both influential and obscure. Though it's less preschool-friendly, the same concept applies to Parappa the Rapper and its equally great spinoff, Um Jammer Lammy.



For the uninitiated, Parappa the Rapper is a rhythm game series that takes place in an almost psychedelic world (designed by Rodney Greenblatt) where everyone is paper-thin and "people" range from humans to furries to anthropomorphic walking flowerpots. The plots are very loose and don't make much sense, and the lyrics to the songs are written by one of the game's Japanese creators, who is fluent in English but not fluid enough to sound completely natural.

But you'll be screaming every single one of them along anyway, because the music goes harder than a bat out of hell.

One of the few songs you might be able to pass off as typical to its genre is Um Jammer Lammy's Fright Flight, which is some of the crunchiest metal to have ever graced my ears. With it's constantly changing time signatures, its a headbanger's dream, and the chaotic, disjointed lyrics ("My knee's in pain/So is my brain") are great even if you prefer growling to screaming.

And... it's sung by a military vet with a case of cartoon amnesia who flip-flops back and forth between spacey old man and grizzled drill sergeant every time he's bonked on the head, which happens repeatedly as one of the panels in the plane he's flying keeps coming loose. No, seriously.

Other songs follow the same pattern, though with more overtly cartoony lyrics. For instance, Parappa 2 gives us a boot camp training song by Sista Moosesha, a sibling to the driving instructor in the first game. This track's got a brass-based beat that could easily be the theme to bad bitches everywhere.

As if to prove just how much the dev team loves music, each song has its own flavor of rap (or rock), all of which really, really didn't have to go as hard as they do. On the opposite end of the spectrum from Fright Flight is the previous level's song, Baby Baby, which is sung by a baby bunny who's part of an extended immature joke revolving around the phrase "breeding like rabbits." This is a toe-tapping 50s-style rock track with lyrics about being an obnoxious little kid. (I think my diaper is wet/I think the bed gon' be next!)


I could gush about each track in this game but an entire blog post about how great each song is is not very exciting, so instead I'll just link to the MilkCan version of Power Off, Power On! because it's my favorite song in the whole series and let you judge for yourself how good the unusual time signature in the chorus is. (Incidentally, that male voice is the guy behind Rhythm and Balance in Sonic Adventure 2!)

What's my point in all of this? Well, Parappa isn't great because it's "funny." It's not Spongebob or Looney Tunes or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where you're going to be shaking with laughter as you follow the character's antics. Parappa is great instead because none of it takes itself seriously--except the backing music, which is done completely stone-faced despite the kooky lyrics. 

Projects where everything is off-the-wall and dumb except for one extremely skillful element, come pretty close to giving me the shivers. Creating a good juxtaposition between wacky elements and serious elements is really difficult, and Parappa manages to do that flawlessly. There's a special kind of magic there, I think. I'm not sure if that's because it shows that even someone with passion for their work can still create something silly, or because I'm just not a fan of gritty, overly-serious media in general.

It's probably both, because I feel the same duality applies to Captain Underpants: stupid, silly books, written for the very serious cause of uplifting children with reading challenges.


There's not much more I want to say on this subject so I'm gonna close this post here and hopefully have a more entertaining entry next time around.