Their very names strike fear in the hearts of white rappers everywhere: Vanilla Ice. Snow. Kevin Federline.
Though there are notable success stories – Eminem and the Beastie Boys – pale emcees often travel a hard road to respect. “The White Rapper Show,” a new reality program debuting Monday (8:30 p.m. on VH1), is both a parody and commentary on race in hip-hop.
The setup is simple and amusing: Ten white amateurs are picked to live in an apartment in New York’s South Bronx (the birthplace of hip-hop), where they must prove their rhyming skills and gain respect. The winner gets $100,000.
“White Rapper” is produced by the “ego trip” collective, which started as a magazine co-founded by Sacha Jenkins and Elliot Wilson. The magazine is defunct, but the company is now a media outfit producing books and provocative TV shows (“Race-O-Rama!”) often dealing with race and hip-hop.
“The power of the show is that when you hear the title, you already have images of what it’s going to be, whether good or bad,” says Wilson. “Most of them are thinking, ‘Oh, it’s going to be some dumb nonsense.’ But it’s not that – it’s smart.” The host is Michael “MC Serch” Berrin, known for the early ’90s hit “The Gas Face” with the group 3rd Bass, who schools the 20-something contestants on hip-hop history and the art of the rhyme.
“This generation can’t answer basic hip-hop trivia,” says Berrin, 39. “Early on, there was a history that you had to know.” Like blues and jazz, hip-hop began as a distinctly African-American expression.
The guys of ego trip (none of whom are white) are well aware that rap is now mainstream popular music, and that its record-buying audience is mostly white.
“There are more white kids who are captivated by the music and the culture than ever,” says ego tripper Jefferson “Chairman” Mao. “I think it’s a terrific thing because music should be shared. It’s for everybody – you just don’t want the origins of it to be lost.” Of course, white rappers have forever been easy targets, and the show is not lacking in Vanilla Ice-style punch lines.
One auditioning rapper speaking about her hometown of Waterford, Conn., prompts Serch to exclaim, “I didn’t know it was that hard in Connecticut.”
Hailing from Davis, Calif., 26-year- old John Brown immediately rubs many contestants the wrong way. In his audition, he asks, “What’s really hood, man? Suburbia.” Once picked as a contestant, Brown proves himself well enough as a rapper. But he infuriates castmates by repeatedly referring to a “Ghetto Revival,” a personal social movement scant on details other than Brown’s claim that it’s a “lifestyle brand” that will support “the revival of ghettoes and all types of different struggles throughout the world.”
Brown’s nemesis emerges as Persia, a confrontational 25-year-old from Queens who describes herself as the show’s “hood connection.” “You’ll see on the show why a lot of white rappers are made fun of,” she said in an interview. “Some of them are just lost.”
