10 Bizarre Storytelling Rap Songs

WTF where these guys thinking when they wrote these songs?

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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One cannot overstate the importance of storytellers in the history of man. As society crept into existence, storytellers became not only the entertainers they are today, but teachers, pastors, leaders, comedians, messengers. These were the men who passed down lore from generation to generation, who spread gospel and mythology, who gave people the idea that the world was larger than just that which existed before them. In the grand tradition of Homer, storytellers like Shakespeare and Judy Blume begat those like Slick Rick and Nas, The Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z. Here were rappers who could not only brag about their own lives, but create vivid worlds out of nothing but their imagination.

That's not to say that every tale is worth telling. In the midst of putting together our list of the 50 Best Storytelling Rap Songs, we ran into some songs that were just umm..strange. Some are boring, others are poorly-told, and then there are those stories that are just too crazy to not listen to. We charged Jeff Rosenthal with a seemingly impossible task: to try and make sense of 10 Bizarre Storytelling Rap Songs

Written by Jeff Rosenthal (@ItsTheReal)

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Nas "Who Killed It?" (2006)

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Album: Hip Hop Is Dead
Label: Def Jam/Columbia/The Jones Experience
Producer: Salaam Remi, will.i.amCold night. Rainy, too—torrents, flying sideways like a will.i.am haircut. At least the studio felt warm, not that it mattered. It was 2006 and hip-hop was dead, deader than the phrase "hip-hop is dead" would become. The killer could've been anyone; could've been everyone. Nas was a private dick, it said so on the door. And, yeah, if you asked Kelis, she'd say the same thing. Suspects were everywhere. Nas knew where to find them; he just had to look. Halfway across the country, Soulja Boy couldn't see the writing on the wall—he'd scrawled his name across the front of his glasses.

Taking the name of his album literally, Nas took off his Filas and put on his gumshoes, picking up a magnifying glass and putting some nasal in his voice. For anyone who thinks Nas has a perfect track record—J. Cole, somehow—take a moment to listen to Queens' own dust off his Robert Mitchum impression. Yikes! That's right, Nas - whose only real movie credit is the heavy-handed Belly—lays out a case for "hip-hop's killer" in the style of a 1940's film noir. (Oh, not that you cared, but who or what killed hip-hop? Money. Pretty unsatisfying reveal, huh? Especially coming from a rapper who made a lot of it.)

Ras Kass "Nature of the Threat" (1996)

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Album: Soul on Ice
Label: Patchwerk/Priority/EMI
Producer: VoooduChuck D once said, "Rap is CNN for black people," a window into the hoods that cameras wouldn't go into. With "Nature of the Threat," Ras Kass shows hip-hop could also be The History Channel—if The History Channel showed someone reading a very long passage from an alternative textbook no one had ever thought to publish for a whole slough of reasons.

Though he makes some interesting points, like how Blacks shouldn't salute the American flag because Jews don't do the same for Swastikas, it's largely lost in the long and detailed tangent on how homosexuality had shaped modern times, as if there's a connection between Greeks molesting their boys in gymnasiums and God being gay, or something. He also talks about how AIDS was created in a lab and how Thanksgiving Day is somehow related to the country Turkey. But ultimately it's just a long run-on sentence that never ends because it just keeps going on and on and then you wake up in a pool of sweat, notice a sign for a gymnasium, and all you can think is, "Oh no."

Akinyele "No Exit" (1993)

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Royce da 5'9 "Part of Me" (2009)

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Album: Street Hop
Label: M.I.C./One
Producer: Carlos Broady

You see the title "Part of Me," maybe you think this is Royce getting emotional, taking a cue from fellow Slaughterhouse member Joe Budden. And so you listen to Royce sketch out a late-night scene: there's a club, see? And a man's talking to a woman, a beautiful woman, one who deserves his time. He's a gentleman, so he tries to buy her a drink; she buys him one instead. Oh! "Well, that's very sweet, isn't it, thank you very much," he thinks, not noticing that she and another woman had dropped something into his Patrón-brand tequila. And he goes home with them, la di da, but he falls asleep before he can have sex and then he wakes up in a bath tub without his dick BECAUSE THEY TOOK IT. "PART OF ME" IS NOT ABOUT HIS HEART, IT'S ABOUT HIS DICK. THIS ISN'T A JOE BUDDEN SONG AT ALL. GOOD LUCK HAVING SEX NOW THAT THEY STOLE YOUR DICK FROM YOUR BODY, TUB MAN. Anyway, that's why you shouldn't drink tequila.

Andre Nickatina "Classified" (1999)

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Album: Tears of a Clown
Label: Fillmoe Coleman
Producer: Dion Peete

R. Kelly once compared a girl to a Jeep, saying, "I wanna ride you." When Andre Nickatina describes how he's in a monogamous relationship with his car, some might think he's crazy, but hold on. Don't throw stones at Dodge Neons, you know? Just hear him out: "My ride, my ride/You dont fake, steal, cheat, or lie/My ride, my ride/And our relationship is classified." Oh, yes, that makes sense. I mean, you might think that his car-girlfriend is also super needy; you might think that she's not great for conversation; you might believe her Blue Book value is a pretty valid indicator of her worth. But hey, not everyone's a people person.

Kilo Ali "She Got Me Eatin' Pussy" (1992)

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Tim Dog f/ Kool Keith "Secret Fantasies" (1991)

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Album: Penicilin on Wax
Label:  Ruffhouse
Producer: 
TR Love, Tim Dog"Americans can be pretty uptight about their sexual kinks, but there are some people who just feel comfortable letting loose. Kool Keith is an open book, saying, ""A lotta people don't wanna talk about their fantasies. They scared to share 'em, but you know what? I'm proud of mines."" And, maybe it's the gift of twenty years and the Internet, but it's fairly standard ""fantasy"" nowadays: he wants to have two girls slobbering all over him, one of them to bring him new clothes, but - most importantly—"I want them panties to smell."

This is where things take a weird turn: Tim Dog—you know, the man who may/may not be currently on the run after faking his own death—details his own fantasy, which is breaking down the door to an En Vogue dressing room, only for the women to cannibalize him with their vaginas. Now, before you think that this ends in wedding bells for all five of them, here are some choice lyrics:

"Dawn was the freaky one
(How freaky?) Man, she so freaky
She wanted me to pee in her face
(Well, what did you do?) I pissed in her face!"

Slick Rick "Adults Only" (1999)

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Album: The Art of Storytelling
Label: Def Jam/IDJMG/Universal
Producer: Dame GreaseBrits speak English, right? Somehow, the word "no" just doesn't translate correctly. In 1999, Slick Rick put out the song "Adults Only," a song that sounds like a rape whistle going off over and over. The night begins with a girl coming over to Rick's apartment and oh man, his hand is down her pants and less than :30 into his verse she's already saying, "Stop!" (His following line? "Knew she was joking." LOL, what a kidder this girl is. Maybe she'd like to do some stand-up for the cops.)

He later says "Surprised honey didn't put up too much of a struggle, at first," and you're wondering if Rick knows he's being recorded. Not only is Slick Rick weirdly persistent on getting ass, more specifically he wants...uh...let's just say he wants to enter her door to R. Kelly's chocolate factory. (He says when closing out the song, "Ain't no way to put it subtle when I want the butthole!") Slick Rick is addicted to butt, like it's his Cookie Crisp or something. And it's like, that's fine, but—PRO-TIP!—get permission first.

Scarface "I'm Dead" (1991)

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Album: Mr. Scarface Is Back
Label: Rap-A-Lot
Producer: Crazy C, Scarface

No one knows what happens when you die. Researchers, religious leaders, Bill Nye, no one knows for sure. Some believe your spirit goes to heaven or hell, or even some place in between; others think you're just in a box. Still, others adopt the teachings of The Sixth Sense and Casper the Friendly Ghost. One of those people? Scarface, who imagines himself living out The Spirit of Christmas (or even a South Park episode), as he wanders the town, wondering why his mom won't respond to his voice, getting freaked out as he walks through walls, screaming because he can't see himself in the mirror. "Oh right," Scarface probably thinks to himself, "I'm dead." That's the name of the song.

KRS-One "I Can't Wake Up" (1993)

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Album: Return of the Boom Bap
Label: Jive Records
Producer: DJ Premier, KRS-One, Adam Courneya

What is this song about, you might ask? The hook says, "I'm a blunt gettin smoked and I can't wake up/I'm a blunt gettin smoked and I can't wake up/I'm a blunt gettin smoked and I can't wake up/I'm a blunt gettin smoked and I can't wake up," but I wish they would just spell it out. Thankfully, KRS-One's first line is "I'm dreaming...about being a blunt." Oh, okay. Now I get it, I think?

For three minutes, KRS-One talks about what it's like to be passed around backstage, from House of Pain to Cypress Hill and Kid Capri, to be used by Redman and De La Soul, to be inhaled by Bill Clinton and...wait, this is just a sex thing, right? Freud?

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