There’s no reason to watch mediocre “Like A Version”s --- there are way too many good ones! HAIM doing Shania is a recent favorite. And, see previously on our blog for #1 Dads and Tom Snowdon (who are now officially a band called No Mono) giving us there best Aussie finger-snappin’ FKA Twigs.
I never got as into Dananananaykroyd as I should have, given my love for yelly powerpunk. I think I was listening to too much Stellastarr* that year.
Envelope - “I’m Not Poor (Just Broke)” - 2005.
Envelope (Tony to friends) is the greatest rapper from Clintonville, Columbus, Ohio. (Ok, he’s the greatest rapper from the whole city, but it’s goofier to plant him in Clintonville, which is not a very rappy neighborhood.) Every time I hear the damn Khalid “Young, Dumb, and Broke” song, I wish I were in a sweaty bar in Columbus hearing Tony rap about his bike courier business and how he’s got “enough loot for Pabst Blue Ribbon.” Other lines that make me crack up every time:
“I don’t get, like, factory machinery caught up in my limbs and shit, or vice versa”
“We ain’t dog in a bag rich, but shit man, I’m 40 in a bag rich”
“I don’t live in like a mud hut....I’m about to move into the neighborhood with the nice mud!”
--Chris
P.S. For Columbus local politics nerds, “Clippers vs. Yankees” is an essential (dated) Envelope joint. The conceit is that the Clippers were at that time the AAA minor-league affiliate of the Yankees, and Tony draws an analogy between the baseball hierarchy and the ruling classes/plebeians of Columbus. This one name-checks the gay former county Republican chair, the school board member who banged his shoe on the table to stop the giveaway of a public radio station, and the former mayor’s makeup choices. (Mayor Mike Coleman never became governor, sigh.)