No. 38: Say Anything, “Got Your Money”

Christopher R. Weingarten | October 28, 2009 1:00 pm

This is the last time we’re gonna take down a rock band for mishandling a rap song, we promise.

The ’00s were the decade of the ironic hip-hop song, an irrefutably hilarious-to-dipshits conceit used by everyone from F2K favorites Dynamite Hack to MC Stephen Hawking to that totally hilars brohammer from your freshman dorm who borrowed your laundry basket all the time and then freestyled that funny rap about laundry baskets, remember that? It was almost enough to make us want to listen to the practically limitless amount of actual rap records that still exist somewhere on Earth. Los Angeles “indie” (read: self-indulgent art-fucks) “punk” (read: practically bleeding with cliché) band Say Anything took the powerful step of pushing “ironic” into “completely disingenuous” with their cover of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s 1999 track “Got Your Money.” The song is from Punk Goes Crunk, an album so worthless that it doesn’t even improve on something called Yo! Indie Rock Raps. (That was the original version of the comp, which Immortal Records promptly aborted when they realized that multiple instances of pants-pissing guyliner bands making booger-picky faces to Bone Thugs was a seven-layer burrito of puerile.) When Immortal dropped this steaming turd onto a MySpace page in 2007, the supporting image juxtaposed Say Anything frontlump Max Bemis with—we are not kidding—Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s mug shot. Somehow, the song is even less tasteful. At no point in its rubber-faced buffoonery do you get the impression that Bemis even enjoys O.D.B.’s music, rap music in general, or anything that isn’t his own band’s insufferable star-bellied sneech tirades. For starters, I’m not even sure Say Anything plays on it—the backing track consists mostly of keyboard farts. Bemis sings ODB’s lyrics like doing so is a fucking chore, like it’s the worst thing humanly possible to be on an ironic rap cover that’s gonna be passed around the Warped Tour message board like a brown bag of glue in a Hardee’s parking lot. And you know what? It actually may be the worst thing in the world. The only solution I can think of is not doing every single thing your record label tells you. I can’t even open the can of worms about how Bemis annoyingly yells “N-WORD!!!” in place of ODB’s actual n-words. Also he name-checks Cisco Adler. I’m not well-versed in whatever MySpace cuddle parties these L.A. scene leeches were having together circa 2007, so I can’t be certain if it’s a shout-out or a diss or whatever. But I do pray that this is the last time someone writes “Cisco Adler” on the Internet. Got Your Money $ (cover) – Say Anything – PUNK GOES CRUNK! [YouTube] Say Anything [Official site] F2K: Idolator Counts Down The 50 Worst Songs Of The ’00s, One By Ear-Splitting One