Snoop Dogg made a True Blood-themed music video. Twitter is a-buzz: all day yesterday, Twits (alt: Tweeps) obediently retweeted the following:
@TrueBloodHBO: #MM #musicmonday “Oh Sookie” by @snoopdogg http://itsh.bo/ohsookie #trueblood
Let’s parse this. I’m unfamiliar both with True Blood and the oeuvre of Snoop Dogg, so this will be HBO-show-themed-rap(?)-videos-for-beginners.
Snoop Dogg (proper noun): A West-coast rap icon, guided to ascendance in the mid-90s by Dr. Dre; Snoop’s real name (Cordozar Calvin Broadus) is empirically more awesome than his stage name. If you have ears and went into or past a school dance, a nightclub, or bar between 1994 and 2004, you have heard “Gin and Juice” or “Drop it Like it’s Hot,” two of Snoop’s inescapable hits.
True Blood (proper noun): An HBO drama based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. Like every popular thing in the world, the show and the novels feature vampires.
Sookie Stackhouse (proper noun): The main character on True Blood, played by Anna Paquin, who, to me, will always be Rogue or that chick with the geese in Fly Away Home.
Fanfic (noun): Abbreviation of “fan fiction,” a genre of storytelling in which devoted fans write stories about their favorite fictional characters (and in which SHIT GETS WEIRD YO).
Snoop Dogg has created the music video version of fanfic about Sookie Stackhouse, using the True Blood set, and this music video is being promoted, on Twitter, by HBO.
Now that I know what’s happening, here are some thoughts on the video:
First, THE LICENSE PLATE HAS FANGS. Now I kind of want a car.
Second, the whole backlit dance sequence looks an awful lot like the Sparkle Motion performance in Donnie Darko. I’d like to think that means this video contains fanfic-within-fanfic, but more likely the choreographer just got lazy.
Third, is this song supposed to be…good? I don’t know hip hop well, but “I wanna do bad things to you,” and “You ever been to LA?” just seem like lazy lyrics. I don’t hear a single clever line. Maybe this is just what happens when one listens to the Beastie Boys to the exclusion of everything else for a few months in the ‘90s, but I rather expect all such music to contain gems like “I got stories like J.D.’s got Salinger,” or “I got the girlies in the coop like the Colonel’s got chickens.”
Fourth, while we’re talking about lyrics and chickens: “I got a whole lotta eggs for her to eat, and these eggs come with a lot of cheese and grits.” Maybe I’ve got my anatomy wrong, but…I don’t think Snoop Dogg has eggs. I very much hope this is a reference to something that happens on the show, because otherwise this metaphor is unthinkably gross.
Role #mmodel: twimomof3: I am listening to “Total Eclipse of the Heart (Glee Cast Version) [feat. Jonathan Groff]” by Glee Cast ? http://bit.ly/c4jZgo #musicmonday. Of course you are, twimomof3.
My #musicmonday pick: Shadrach, the Beastie Boys song quoted above.