Rawcus' Racially Tinged Song "White People Crazy" Is the Sound of the Internet Eating Itself

Featuring a silhouetted collection of dudes, Mystery Science Theatre 3000-style, in front of videos of white people doing ridiculous, Jackass-style nonsense, Atlanta rapper Rawcus' "White People Crazy" is the sound of the Internet eating itself alive.

Although it remains a little south of viral (still only 253,000 YouTube hits as of this writing), it's popular enough to warrant the modest amount of consideration that a few blog posts might allow, if only because the trap beat behind Rawcus' tomfoolery is actually kind of good.

To be sure, there's a racial hornet's nest that "White People Crazy" stirs up.

The YouTube comments section -- typically the bastion of well-considered, erudite observations, as you surely know -- is littered with lots of hastily dispatched "Why is it not okay for white people to make a video like this?" gripes. Similar comments follow almost every article posted about the video.

Depending on the reader, the myriad problems with that line of reasoning are either self-evident or bear far more convincing than one can do in so short an article as this. Moreover, they kind of miss the point entirely: Rawcus mostly is just having a laugh, one about as harmless as the World's Wildest Videos-type show would be garnering from these videos anyway.

And, to be sure, many of the funniest moments in the song are a subversion of its very title: showing Michael Jackson dangling his infant from the balcony, "Half-Obama, he crazy;" "Kanye West's clothes, they crazy."

And, okay, I know I'm giving far too much thought to a goofy video on the Internet that was probably made in a day or two, but bear with me: Rawcus remains, intentionally, a cipher throughout. We never see his face. And, buried near the middle of the song, he raps, "I remember being in that womb / Like, 'Let me out, I'm going crazy!'" So, wait, Rawcus is white? Who fucking knows? He says at the end, "I don't know what we'd do without ya'll," and the "we" serves to differentiate him from the white people he's poking fun at. Again: Who fucking knows?

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It doesn't matter all that much, I guess, except for the fact that the song seems to be designed with the express purpose of getting white people all riled up, at least the kind of white person who gets riled up by a dumb video on the Internet called "White People Crazy."

He directly addresses white people as his audience in the song ("And now back to your regularly scheduled program, white people!") and, at its conclusion, begs for an iTunes download so that he can get "some of your white-ass money." Again, to most of its viewers this is merely some pretty funny posturing, but it does become a little problematic if it's a white guy doing all the hornet's nest stirring.

Whatever. It's a funny video worth the four minutes of your time. If you're the type to be offended by the repeated assurances from Rawcus that white people are crazy, you might easily hit the mute button and enjoy the disposable entertainment that watching people try to jump off of roofs and light their hair on fire provides.






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