Comedy Hip Hop To Offend Your Old Lady By

For the past decade or so, the universe has only tasted Limerick City’s greatest gangster rappers The Rubberbandits in sporadic, ridiculous blips. That they put together all their songs, prank calls, and surreal loops into a neat 2-disc, 24-track package is cause for celebration and beer-soaked spit-takes.

The Irish goofballs rose to viral fame last year with their hip hop track “Horse Outside,” in which the MCs — who wear bags over their faces by trade — brag about their pimpmobile: a horse. They’ve since taken a trip to New York City and the Jersey Shore with us, and they’ve dropped video upon video, hitting a specific comedy note that lies somewhere between really brash and really charming, with a little bit of Irish pride thrown in.

Onto their album Serious About Men, which is packaged in images of women’s breasts, kittens, and tampons, with the note: “something for the ladies.” But more fun than their latest off-kilter, frattier singles like “I Wanna Fight Your Father” and “Too Many Gee” (aka lady’s privates), is The Rubberbandits’ penchant for the completely surreal. “Spastic Hawk” – a rambling, atonal new wave jam track about a misfit hawk just trying to fit in — might be genius. Their song “Buddies in Boston,” about all the Irish people living there, would merely be amusing, but the completely unnecessary, intense dubstep underlay makes it exquisite. The more would-be offensive tracks like “Black Man” are actually proof of their insight into the commoditization of race. Though, they’d never use those words out loud. Instead they say: “I got a Puerto Rican and a nervous Jew/Intimidating Russian with a fake tattoo/I got a, a hot blonde with plastic boobs/but there’s something missing from my crew/I need a black man/In my gang.”

Moreover, their prank calls are so much better than your average, screamy, cringeworthy Jerky Boys fare. Nothing in recent history is funnier than their vintage track “The Bank,” in which a Rubberbandit calls a bank to issue a very unusual grievance — one that I won’t spoil, but let’s just say the caller now gets panic attacks every time he opens a bag of Smarties.

In fact most of Serious About Men really hits, and that includes some of the more serious stuff like “Up Da Ra,” a Celtic fiddle hip hop track about the IRA. However, no words can adequately describe the widely varied, extremely self-aware breed of Irish comedy The Rubberbandits are conveying to the world. You just have to listen to it. And with any luck, some of you will be offended.

Image Courtesy of Lovely Men