New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: E.m-bed.de/d by Yung Jake

Rap has finally entered the internet age. I know what you’re thinking, “But NJWB, you explained how rappers like Turquoise Jeep and Lil B used Twitter and Facebook to get a bunch of people to listen to them, and how sites like Rap Genius use advanced features from popular websites to explain rap lyrics?” Yes I did, and yes they are. But they would need a spaceship to get on his level (I’m against the ladder that’s forever). You might also say to me “You’re just using this introduction as a thinly veiled attempt to get views on your previous articles.” Well, Mr. Strawman… that’s actually pretty good. I thought you were supposed to be easier to defeat than that. Um, okay, yeah, you’re right. But let’s talk about the music.

Yung Jake is ironic to a degree I’ve never seen – liking Justin Bieber, painting his nails, no emotion in the love song “It’s Alright”, running the kind of website I created in 5^th grade computer class (actually, my website was better), autotuning even though he doesn’t sing, using and liking Macs (boom! Suck it Mac users!) [editor’s note: those using Macs do not have to “suck it”, and their purchases do not make them bad people], and the list goes on. As he says in "Datamosh", “it’s cool because it’s nerdy”, and as a child whose constantly embedded in the internet, I can only agree. And I think that’s where the appeal is – someone who can rap about the nerdiest aspects of the internet, but make them gangsta. Because that’s what “hood” people are doing now; using Twitter, Facebook, and various websites and blogs to discuss their “hood” activities.

Like Lil B, he’s almost intentionally bad to lampoon hip-hop. His raps are pretty much about nothing, but feature some great word play, like almost the entirety of “Embedded” (I’m not going to spell it the proper way because I’m lazy). The fact that he chooses a troll face when he claims he’s an "internet meme" is almost telling of this fact (or the fact that it’s the only cool rage face whose mouth can easily be moved, but I prefer my theory). With the exclusion of “Embedded”, it’s all about the clothes he wears, shout outs to friends (or enemies, I don’t know the guy personally), and just the inane shit that most rappers talk about. But Yung Jake doesn’t seem to do it on purpose; it’s like he knows it’s stupid, and raps about it because it’s stupid, but fun to do. He does it for the lols.

What adds to his nerdiness is how meta he is. Just watching the “Datamosh” video gives you an idea of that. I’m not sure what came first, the video or the song, but it’s definitely a fusion of both audio and video, and it’s amazing. When he says that he’s moving Justin Beiber with his face, he does it in the video. Or when, in the “Embedded” video, when he’s confused about the line he just spat, a Rap Genius window pops up, explaining the line he just said. It’s almost too meta for me to accurately describe. And I think that’s the main draw for me; it’s at a higher level of thought and planning than most rappers put into their work.

As for the actual song I’m sharing, it’s a fantastic just as a rap song. Embedded has an anxious beat, like it’s almost anticipating the buzz that Yung Jake is about to get. Even when the beat breaks during the chorus, you still feel like you should expecting more. And that’s what I am; expecting more good stuff from Yung Jake. His calm voice is slightly autotuned, giving it a pleasant electronic vibe, only adding to the whole “internet” persona that he gives off. And the video he makes is fantastic; it mimics Arcade Fire’s “Downtown Wilderness” video, except it is actually good and not just an ad for HTML 5. While he may not have captured that video, it was clearly what he wanted to be done with the tools he gave people.

But what’s strange is that he’s also kind of… creepy. “It’s Alright” has him saying that he’s 8 years older than this girl, which wouldn’t be too bad if he wasn’t in his early 20’s. It’s also hinted at in “Cut Offs” at various points. There’s no explicit mention of the pedophilia, but it’s pretty obvious is you listen to it. Then you got his 30 second freestyle, in which he says that “I like them bitches when they're 14/And when they're 15: better/16: ehh/17: never.” Maybe it’s an indictment of men around the world, and their affinity of much younger women. I don’t know. Usually I’m pretty good at parsing out the thing being parodied here, but maybe he just likes younger women. Or that he still feels like he’s 14 at heart, and therefore is only interested in 14 year old girls, but Steve the Editor in Chief/Psych Major would know better than me [editor’s note: he does not].

Yung Jake is an enigma, and I think that’s the way he likes it. Since he’s still pretty new to the game and only getting play on a few blogs, there’s not much analysis that I can steal from use to inform my own thoughts about him. But either way, he’s about to get big. While his early stuff definitely hurts from the low production value and just general newness to the game, he finally found his voice with “Embedded”, and if that’s any indication, I’m excited to see what else he can come out with.

I can only hope to get mentioned by Yung Jake, even if it means saying that I don’t truly appreciate what he’s doing (which I totally do). His raps are modern art; detailed deconstructions of the hip-hop genre, much like Alan Moore’s Watchmen is a deconstruction of the super hero genre. It’s modern art at its finest.

Below is an the embedded video of the song (haha, see what I did there?), and here’s the link to the website he built solely for the song, so you can make your own video

http://e.m-bed.de/d/ (well what do you know? It’s the title of the song!)

EDIT: Yung Jake shared this article! Biggest moment of the blog (in my opinion), and a really happy moment in my life.