Chronicle Books, publisher of very cool books like Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Modern, many “Art of” books, and a lot of pop culture stuff in general, is having their annual Friends and Family sale. This only lasts until tomorrow, so you’d better act quick. Just enter FRIENDS as a coupon code, and you’ll get 35% off.
I took advantage of it to snag Cartoon Modern for $26.
Vintage SMC: The sweet, sweet sounds of Mickey Unrapped
Some memories are best left alone. If I wasn’t so addicted to reliving the memories I have buried deep in my subconscious, Disney’s Mickey Unrapped could still be a great album. Heck, Animaniacs could still be hilarious. Unfortunately, my inner child can’t let that happen. I have to know if something’s still good. I usually call this rewatchablilty, seeing as how most of these feelings involve television shows or movies. In this case, you could call it…relistenability…er…well you know.
I loved Mickey Unrapped when I was nine. Nineteen ninety-four was a good year for kids. A prequel, if you will, to the treasure chest that was 1995. I loved everything Disney and I didn’t care if I was succumbing to their corporate branding schemes. In my mind, Mickey Mouse must have felt the need to record a rap cd with all his friends and, by golly, I would be there to support him.
I fondly remember going to Wal-Mart and buying the cassette. This was back in the day when Disney cassettes came packaged in those big thick plastic things that you had to get hedge trimmers to get past the first half inch, and then the rest would just fall apart. Over time I lost the tape, but I was lucky enough to snag a copy (a compact disc!) on ebay for ten cents, sealed and all. Wow, I would get to open Mickey Unrapped again!
Is a Mickey rap cd necessary? Who’s idea was it? In the real world, this idea would originate in some boardroom with a bunch of boring businessmen in suits, but in my nine-year old mind, Walt Disney was still alive somewhere and it had to have been his idea. Or Mickey’s. So was ‘ol Walt a hip-hopper? Here’s one of my adolescent interpretations of how this cd was born.
California: 1958
There you have it. Now, let’s get on with the album itself. How does it stand the test of time?
Right off the bat this album is confusing. I expected, even after twelve years, to hear the familiar bass line from “Ice Ice Baby” (or rather from “Under Pressure”), but alas, it’s nowhere to be found. Most likely, Disney couldn’t get the rights to the original song, and knowing how dumb kids are, went ahead with the song. Not that it matters too much though, the song would still just be one big pun. Apparetnly Disney thinks the word “cool” was invented by rappers and hasn’t been around since the fifties. Somewhere The Fonze is rolling in his grave. (I know) I don’t even want to count the number of times Mickey jokingly raps that he’s “so cool he’s co-co-cold!”
Once, twice, thrice, nice like ice/The beat is the best when you sing it with the mice
I have to admit, this one is kinda catchy. The concept of a whole song about how cool Minnie Mouse is kind of creeps me out though. Was it designed to appeal to boys? If so it shouldn’t have been. Do the girls care how cool Minnie is? Oh well. Once again, this track was written by either a calculator or a really weird kid, like the one in your English class who was always drawing pictures of Lola Bunny.
Now Minnie’s here and it’s a mouse house party/ Go tell it to Michael and Mona and Marty/ Gonna twirl, gonna swire, and ride the groove/ And when you see her you got to… MOVE!
I hate using the term sell out, but wow. Tag Team not only agreed to let Disney spoof their song, but they perform on it too? You never saw Michael Jackson performing with Weird Al.
Take track two, make it about Mickey instead of Minnie, add a dash of Salt ‘n Pepa, and bam! Instant classic! Minnie Mouse “raps” about how faithful Mickey is to her and how he’s completely perfect in every way and how we should all feel like terrible people because we are not Mickey Mouse.
And yes he’s got what I want from A to Z/ He says I drive him crazy/ And he knows that my name is not Daisy.
Hmm.
Apparently Whoopi goldberg knows rap, and she doesn’t even have to rap to prove it! Instead, she’s gonna talk reaaaal smooooth. About Pluto. And bark. This cd is getting old fast.
Dogs are cool. Dogs are good/ Would ya like to be a dog? I thought you would.
I wanna be a dog soooo bad…I could just shoot someone! Right Walt?
I don’t ever remember Goofy graduating from R.A.P. University, but I guess I could’ve missed that one. I wonder what R.A.P. University stands for anyway. Really Annoying Production? (I could’ve sworn obnoxious started with an A, sorry) Anyway, if PUN is the word in Mickey Unrapped, this song takes the cake. This track could have been called “Goofy misspells various forms of DJ, hilarity ensues.”
Heuy, Dewie, and Leuy are “on the run” and are apparently very dangerous. This track makes me mad because I still love Ductales furiously and I don’t want anything crapping on those memories, especially not the voice actors themselves. You hear that VOICE ACTOR?
M.C. M-I-C-K-E-Y. on the M-I-C
That about sums it up.
Disney assumes not only do kids know what the word botch means, but use it/hear it enough to warrant making it the title of the most recognizable song on the album. But then again, nothing really rhymes with touch. All in all this is actually a semi-entertaining song. The things Goofy does (botches) are silly enough that you forget you’re listening to a Mickey rap cd.
he talks a lot, we get it. They were scraping the barrell with this one.
A for effort. Does it really matter anymore?
Finally, something pleasing to the ears. Just sit back, close your eyes, don’t listen to the words, and it kind of seems like real music. That’s a start!
Well, I wish I could just give you all the mp3s of these songs so you could hear for yourself, but Disney probably wouldn’t like that too much. Not that Disney would like seeing a gun in Walt’s hand, but oh well.
Just think, if they could have waited a year we could have had Goofy’s Paradise (Featuring Coolio).
-Tommy
Nothing says nostalgia like school supplies, especially awesome, totally unnecessary school supplies. Everyone remembers that time in late summer when Wal-Mart would start putting up the Back to School signs and you would just pretend like you didn’t see them. You could avoid them for a while, but come late August you had to take the trip. I remember walking the aisles with my Mom and gawking at all the awesome folders. You could get your favorite sports star, cartoon character, animal, or (insert trend of the month) on folders. My mom would only let me get one cool folder though, the rest had to be boring plain colored ones.
Oh well, I had a Trapper Keeper. Any folder would look like it was made of solid gold when it was nestled snugly inside a genuine Mead Trapper Keeper. That’s not an image of the actual TP I had (like many other things, it met its fate via a price tag at a garage sale) but I think it’s pretty close. I know I had a designer series clad with epic geometric shapes (Geomepic©?). The graphic designer in me really hopes that someday the state of design de-evolves back to about 1994, because frankly, I loved folders depicting animals playing extreme sports.
For some reason I had a Harley Davidson folder too, as well as one of those save-the-whales type paintings showing a bunch of animals looking all beautiful and perfect. As far as what the girls were repping, I think Lisa Frank says it all.
Somehow I remember this Trapper Keeper. Once again, 90’s graphic design at it’s finest. It’s really amazing that there’s such a lack of TP content on the web. If you Google them, you get a lot of references, but hardly any photos. There’s usually a good 5-7 TP’s on ebay at any given time, and they actually go pretty high. Nothing prepared me for what came up on the first page of results, however. Mead is releasing brand new old-school-style Trapper Keepers in the Fall of 2007?? Pinch me!
Seriously, if they were taking pre-orders, I would sign up. I’ll think of something to use a new Trapper Keeper for. I might even be a huge dork and start taking one to my college classes next year. Or! I start using one to hold my mailing list sign-up papers at my music gigs. Hmm, the possibilities are endless! There will be six new designs. Three retro designs and three more conservative (but still old-school) solid color designs. Personally, I think the solid color TP’s are the most old-school. Remember the simple red ones with the white line? Try finding one of those now. We can only hope that they also resurrect the designer series and let some cracked-out designers go wild.
It’s funny that the official site offers schools a chance to win $500 by sticking Trapper Keeper’s on their official school supply list. When you Google them, about half of the results are school’s websites listing supplies, and about all of them say NO TRAPPER KEEPERS. My guess is that too many kids were getting their heads bashed in by jealous people who didn’t own sweet Trapper Keepers.
I think collecting vintage TP’s would be very cool, but without an official list of what was made, I’d feel like I was just wondering around aimlessly. How many designs did they come out with? Was there officially licensed Trapper Keepers? I guess we’ll never know. Unless you work for Mead and would like to tell me.
