November 30, 2015
Even before N.W.A. decided to tackle hip-hop’s relationship with law enforcement, the two have been, let’s say, a little at odds. Cops and rap haven’t exactly gone together like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, they usually go together more like oil and water. But the police on the Prairies recently set out to show off their rhyming chops in the name of safe winter driving.
It, uhh… kind of worked. In the sense of bringing attention to the way you should be navigating poor, icy road conditions, the whole experiment has done its job. Quality hip-hop it is definitely not, but no one was about to hand over a JUNO to the RCMP anyway. It all began in with the Kindersley RCMP, who parodied Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” and the whole thing snowballed (sorry) from there.
The participants so far have included:
- Calgary Police Service (“Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot).
- Edmonton Police Service (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme).
- Regina Police Service (“Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars).
- Medicine Hat Police Service (Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It”).
- Millet Fire Department (also “Baby Got Back”).
- Coronation RCMP (Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”).
Hopefully, that’ll be about it for cringeworthy rap PSAs from Canadian police, but we have a long winter here up north. Maybe next they’ll try highlighting the snowman laws in Souris, PEI, or the countrywide ban on comics depicting crime.
In Other News:
- Rdio files for bankruptcy.
- Vancouver’s Scrape Records is up for sale.
- The Toronto Raptors brought the ‘Hotline Bling’ cube to Drake Night.
- Nova Scotian soprano is making waves across the pond.
- Pono comes to Canada.
