Satirical Hip Hop / Meme Rap

About

Satirical Hip Hop (often referred to as Ironic rap or Meme Rap) refers to a sub genre of hip hop that is created with the intention of becoming viral, normally as a joke and/or a parody of prominent genres such as Gangsta rap^[1] and trap music^[2]. The satirical nature of an ironic rap song is often intentionally left out of its title, cover image, and description, in order to catch listeners by surprise. Meme rap typically features lo-fi cloudy production^[13], simplistic music videos, lazy rhymes, and intentionally stereotypical lyrics, with humor as the goal.

Origin

Although satirical hip hop music was made with no serious intent or for the purposes of parodying the gangsta genre in the 90’s, meme rap only became mainstream with the success of American rapper Lil B with his single “Wonton Soup” (shown below) released on August 11th, 2010.

The video has received over 12 million views, 50k likes, and 54k comments as of December 2014. It is worth nothing that it also has 30k dislikes, likely due to the stealthiness of its parodistic nature. The song features lines that would be considered stereotypical of the hip hop genre, as well as poor rhymes and a lazy flow.^[9] The style has become the defining characteristic of Lil B’s body of work as well as meme rap in general.

Spread

After the success of Lil B, many other artists began taking on the same lo-fi self-parodying style of music, one of them being Swedish rapper Yung Lean, who with his associates (named SADBOYS), would become popular after the release of their mixtape Unknown Death 2002 and the release of the single “Hurt” featuring multiple 90’s products and references, as well as 98’s windows screensavers.

The song features the same sloppy delivery that Lil B is famous for.

On Sep 24, 2011, Tyler The Creator,^[4] under the moniker “Young Nigga”, released a song named “Come Through Looking Clean”^[6] which was a parody of mainstream hip hop music. The song draws heavy inspiration from Lil B’s music, who is said to be one of Tyler’s favorite artists.

After a few years, the term “Meme Rap” was used as a term to insult rap music and artists; this use was heavy on the 4chan board /mu/ (Music) due to the constant spamming of said artists. The term has since become popular outside of the board and is now constantly used to attack popular underground artists.

The hate was normally presented on “essential charts” common on the board. The charts typically featured rappers and albums that were popular on the board, despite not intentionally making music that would be considered ironic.

Youtube has created a playlist titled “meme rap” featuring an assortment of satirical rappers.^[8] The satirical site Encyclopedia Dramatica includes an article on Ironic Rap.^[11] Other popular meme rappers include Riff Raff,^[3] Die Antwoord,^[5] Das Racist,^[12] Lil Ugly Mane, and Viper the Rapper.