If you pegged the Brooklyn-via-Wesleyan duo Das Racist’s shtick as simple joke-rap, perhaps based on a little existential cartography lesson called “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” you would’ve been half wrong: Das (pronounced like a crude “that’s”) Racist’s shtick is extremely complicated joke-rap, a hyperliterate hodgepodge of hipster irony, endearingly nerdy humanities banter, rhetorico-surrealist wordplay, hardcore fast food loyalties, and two-brown-dudes-walk-into-a-bar postracialism. Only the bar is a weed dispensary, and it’s owned by Norman Mailer and Ghostface Killah. Sample line: “Spare me that titty fat, jimmy hack, gimme that Similac.” Another: “My Florsheims is tight.” Try out last year’s two mixtapes, Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man; if you think you can hang, go find your boys not at the Popeyes (what?) or Da Pitt BBQ (huh?) but at Fitz’s Tuesday night.
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2011.