When The Tonight Show presenter Jimmy Fallon slammed Australian rapper Bangs's 2009 track Take U to da Movies as "terrible" on his segment Do Not Play, he probably thought nothing would come of it but a few laughs.
However, after initially brushing of the slight, Bangs fired back with a diss track of his own this week, even going as far as to make fun of a serious injury Fallon sustained a few weeks ago in an accident that nearly lost him a finger.
“Jimmy Fallon said my song was horrible, you need to fix your hand before the show because it looks terrible,” Bangs spits. “I should sue your [expletive] for playing my song at your show, but I’m not doing that because your broken hand looks gross.”
Lame lyrics aside, the diss track is a well-timed publicity move, because Bangs’s career has well and truly stalled.
When Take U to da Movies was released, it garnered the Australian-South Sudanese rapper a cult following for its bizarre video, although it had nothing to do with the topic. Instead, Bangs rapped over superimposed images of sports cars and American dollar bills. The lyrics, which you can even find in a special YouTube video, have Bangs providing an excruciating, play-by-play description on how he took his hot date to the movies:
“Hey shorty, you really looking nice/ Let me take you the movie cause I know you like/ You got nothing to worry about, hold the popcorn and the drink/ Let me pay the money so we can get in/ Now hold my hand and take a step to the door/ Be careful; don’t fall/ Let’s sit on those two chairs alone, watching a movie, so we can see what’s going on/ If you don’t like to watch you can lean on my chest/ Take a rest, do your best.”
His follow-up song Meet Me on Facebook (let's not even go there), may have failed to bring him more notoriety, but the rapper has been saved from being ridiculed out of the Australian hip-hop scene, thanks to his cheeky sense of humour and ability to laugh at himself. These qualities have endeared him to his fellow Aussies to such as an extent that he has been referred in the scene as "Our boy Bangs".
But it doesn't feel like a joke this time. Also, he might have pushed the envelope a bit too far — Bangs also took a pot-shot at The Tonight Show's backing band The Roots. His ode to Fallon includes the words "tell your band to stop laughing".
Bangs obviously doesn't know who he is messing with. Not only are The Roots some of hip-hop's greatest pioneers, their MC, Black Thought, is also one of the genre's best lyricists. In an industry where battle rapping is akin to a rite of passage, no one has ever had the audacity to take on Black Thought, especially with the New Yorker's fierce talent for wordplay. An example is his 2004 track Web, which describes his raps as "Sharp like a razor blade under the tongue/Clear my path and come get your captain hung/Trying to breath, Black'll collapse your lungs/Young chump you could choke off the web I spun/I done cleared 'em out from the thread I brung [sic]".
Bangs better hope the hip-hop giants and the amiable Fallon shrug off his silly track, or the end credits to his career might soon be rolling.
• The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is on OSN First Comedy HD at 9pm, Tuesday to Saturday. For details, visit www.osn.com
