10 Rap Songs You Can Listen To With Your Kids

Tunes the whole family can enjoy!

Sep 26, 2013
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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

I have kids. Three, in fact. It's cool, I guess. (Though it's definitely cooler NOT having kids, if you're looking for advice.) When you have children you have to make all kinds of concessions, the most devastating of which is (perhaps) music selection.

Theoretically you can definitely still listen to whatever you want because kids are weak as shit and they won't be able to physically overpower you and change the station, but it's probably just not worth it. Like, it's funny listening to aggressively ignorant rap music with your kids when it's just you and your kids, but then when your five-year-old goes to school and asks his teacher to "bust that pussy open/ let me see you bring it back," I mean, that's just not that great of a phone call to get from school administration.

So, some help: A playlist of rap songs that you can listen to with your progeny that are waythefuck better than Raffi. Here are 10 Rap Songs You Can Enjoy With Your Kids.

Written by Shea Serrano (@SheaSerrano)

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DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince "Parents Just Don't Understand" (1988)

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Album: He's The Dj, I'm The Rapper
Label: Jive
I LITERALLY used to this song with my parents. I would turn it on and get so happy and start bouncing around and rap all the words and my dad would just sit there and be so ashamed. Love.


Note: Something I didn't know until I had kids of my own: The premise behind "Parents Just Don't Understand" is a fallacy. Parents understand. We understand the shit out of everything. It's just that being a parent is the worst. We totally resent the freedom and lack of responsibility that a kid (or even an adult without kids) has. So we just pick and pick and pick at them.


That's why Will Smith's mom didn't buy him the clothes he wanted. It wasn't money (they had a Porshe, remember?). It was spite. "Oh, that's a thing that makes you happy, kid? Well then I'll just take that shit away from you so can experience at least a tiny amount of the misery I live everyday." A better title probably would've been, "Parents Just Don't Give A Fuck."


Mos Def "Umi Says" (1999)

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Album: Black on Both Sides
Label: Rawkus
I actually wrote an essay for LA Weekly right before my third son was born talking through trying to figure out what would be the first rap song I'd play for him and ended up on "Umi Says." It's just beautiful and perfectly constructed and just my everything. What's curious though is that while the song is obviously gorgeous, the cover of the album that it's on is maybe the most terrifying album cover for a kid to look at it (it's the one that's a super close up of Mos Def's face with the black background). I showed it to my first sons like, "Yo, this is Mos Def," and they just started crying and throwing up and I think one of them passed out. Irony is funny sometimes.

Arrested Development "Tennessee" (1992)

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Album: 3 Years,5 Months & 2 Days in the Life of...
Label: CapitolI don't know that there's anything better than kids listening to this song, if only because after two or three times they'll begin singing the words. I'm saying, there's nothing funnier than a kid spouting, "Lord, I've really been real stressed, down and out, losing friends" while drawing on a Magna Doodle or whatthefuckever. I mean, it's definitely better than them doing it with Beyonce's "Run The World," which is what my sons have been doing for the last three days.


Biz Markie "Just A Friend" (1989)

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Album: The Biz Never Sleeps
Label: Cold Chilllin'
Three things:


  1. Most unintentionally entertaining part of the video: That someone was like, "Yo, dudes, let's start the video out with you guys all sitting on a bench. Yeah, YES, all six of you." And then all six of the guys were like, "Cool." 

  2. Biz Markie tells stories weird. A girl from the U.S. Nation? You mean Brooklyn? Say Brooklyn then. 

  3. Perfect song for kids, given that you're able to ignore that the whole song is about Biz Markie being mad at girls for either not letting him fuck them (first verse) or them fucking other dudes (second and third verse).

De La Soul "Me Myself and I" (1989)

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Album: 3 Feet High and Rising
Label: Tommy Boy Records
No group has ever had a more devastating bad haircut-per-member ratio than De La Soul in the "Me, Myself and I" video. Still, DLS is (was?) the tits.


A Tribe Called Quest "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" (1990)

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Album: People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
Label: Jive
So many reasons why this is a perfect song to listen to with your kid. There's an historical tilt. (Nobody has EVER written a better song about meeting a Latino dwarf). And there's a cosmological tilt. (Is there really any argument that Q was rolling around in the fringes of the universe when he composed this?)


But mostly, it's because the premise is something that a kid would completely agree with: El Segundo is nearly 3,000 miles from Long Island. Q and his buddies drive there, Q leaves his wallet, then Q demands that they drive back to retrieve it. There is nothing on the planet that I'd drive 3,000 miles to get. I'm not gonna drive THIRTY miles out of my way for something. If my 10-month-old son needed a heart transplant and if he didn't get it they were gonna put him in a box and bury him and there was a viable heart but it was more than 20 minutes outside of Houston, I'd be like, "Well, we tried."


N.W.A "Express Yourself" (1988)

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Album: Straight Outta Compton
Label: PriorityIt does a have very responsible "Kids, don't do drugs" message. But, three things:


  1. The clean version, probably. 

  2. The video starts with a kid slave being whipped by a slave owner. 

  3. If you play this song and your kid likes it, you've got a dope fucking kid.

Kris Kross "Jump" (1992)

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Album: Totally Krossed Out
Label: Columbia


oh
fuck
Oh
Fuck
OH
FUCK
OOOHHHHHHHHHHHH
FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK


You already know.


Arrested Development "People Everyday" (1992)

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Album: 3 Years,5 Months & 2 Days in the Life of...
Label: CapitolActually, I'm not sure how this song made the list. I guess because it's Arrested Development and they're such flower-children hippies. Like, you can imagine them hosting their own kids show, talking to the chuckle patch in the Magic Garden. The song is ostensibly uplifting, sure. But here's the thing nobody ever seems to notice about "Everyday People": All of the anti-Semitism.


There's a part halfway through the first verse where Speech raps, "My day was going great and my soul was at ease, until a group of Jews starting bugging out." He continues, "With their big Jew noses and their curly Jew sideburns." I mean, that's definitely not cool. 


Vanilla Ice "Ice Ice Baby" (1989)

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Album: To The Extreme
Label: SBK
Can we all just stop pretending like Vanilla Ice during the "Ice Ice Baby" era wasn't the fucking coolest? Because, bro, he definitely was. He was tall, thin, had great hair, an even better jaw line, rode a street bike, wore an earring, sliced like a ninja and cut like a razor blade. There was nobody that didn't want to be him then. (I kind of still want to be him from back then.)


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