Comedic rap attack

Hip-hop of today is increasingly becoming a parody of its former self. Any fans from the pre-hip pop years might agree that much of what's common on the radio these days is almost, well, a joke. So it shouldn't be surprising that a group of former college friends who met at Wesleyan University were sharp enough to pen witty rhymes that hit like comedy punch lines yet were good enough to be taken seriously. That's not easy to do, but the trio of New York rappers known to the world as Das Racist have spent the past two years using hilariously whip-smart humor and abrasive personalities to win over Internet audiences and music critics alike.

Every major music outlet of merit, from Rolling Stone to The New York Times to MTV, has bestowed love upon them, and the storyline is often the same: a group of politically astute, college-educated joke rappers are managing to turn the hip-hop world on its head. In part, those story angles are mostly correct. Emcees Himanshu (Heems) Suri and Victor Vazquez consistently craft stanzas that can reference everyone from Edward Said to 13th century poet Rumi (even in the same song) and challenge race, racism and class in both subtle and obnoxious ways. Throw in the high-IQ hypeman of the trio, Ashok Kondabolu, aka Dap — whose older brother, Hari Kondabolu, actually is a professional comedian who also challenges race — and you get a group of rather hairy brown kids that shock the shit out of their white fan base yet seem like clever rap heroes to certain audiences of color. For the record, both Kondabolu and Suri are of South Asian descent and were raised in Queens by parents born in India while Vazquez is Afro-Cuban and European and was raised in the Bay Area of California.

What's helped Das Racist's material — released on a pair of 2010 free mixtapes, Sit Down, Man and Shut Up, Dude — proliferate among certain sectors of the Internet masses is that they consistently find comical, powerful ways to speak the truth.

And they typically do so over increasingly left-of-center, hip-hop and club beats. At the majority of their shows, you can see packed, sweaty dance floors in venues well over capacity swarming with twentysomethings, many of whom are white, immigrant or first-generation American hipsters, whether they like to admit it or not, losing their senses and going ape-shit to heavy, synth-driven beats. Meanwhile Das Racist will be on stage, usually drunk, spitting lyrics like: "Really though, frat dudes are like Juggalos/ underrated in the game like Mark Ruffalo." Or getting girls to dance on stage during party raps while challenging privilege and sexism at the same time. It's an odd juxtaposition you have to see in person to fully understand, and it makes Das Racist all that much more uncomfortably enjoyable to watch. What's often not mentioned about the group is that, despite having slightly dickish personalities while they're entertaining, off stage they're genuinely the nicest dudes you'd ever meet; they drink tea incessantly, prefer shopping at thrift stores, and are the kings of creating inside jokes.

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