At least partially in response to our bemused post, Das Racist’s Victor Vasquez has written an essay explaining his band’s “cover” of Paul’s Boutique at Cameo last week (basically, they played it off a laptop and then screwed around onstage for an hour). Vasquez says the guys realized they didn’t actually know the words the day of the show, but have no regrets that they didn’t attempt to learn them because “that would’ve been boring and lame way of spending our time and that if we had to ‘do it all over again’ we probably still would’ve been getting drunk and doing whip-its with that underage white girl at her parents’ summer home upstate all weekend. Naw, just playing. She was 19.” He goes on to compare the cornucopia of references and un-cleared samples on Paul’s Boutique to Das Racist’s “vibing” with the album instead of performing it: Both acts were “celebrating musical history and attempting to reconcile their experiences with that history and interact with those texts, while still having actual fun.”
So, okay: We agree wholeheartedly both with Vasquez’s take on Paul’s Boutique, and that a straight karaoke cover of the album would be weird/boring coming from Das Racist (although could still be awesome and something we would definitely pay money for, by the way, if anyone else wants to try it). But, while we did expect some kind of twist, we also expected to be entertained. So, yes, justifying your own laziness/carelessness as a veiled ode to a classic album after-the-fact is certainly clever, but it’s still a bunch of bullshit.
Also, like the Village Voice, we were unaware of what Vasquez calls “the hilarious ongoing beef between the two publications over” Das Racist, but now feel we have to get that going for real. And with that, you may return to your regularly scheduled programming of not paying attention to any of this stuff ever.
WE MIGHT BE A LITTLE DUSTED BUT WE’RE NOT INSANE [Street Carnage]
Das Racist Speak Out On Their Beastie Boys Mini-Scandal: “We Might Be A Little Dusted But We’re Not Insane” [VV]
