Author: Michael Swaim

As we trundle toward the end of another year, it’s more important than ever to convince your kids that an elderly flying man has broken into your home. But just as important, we also pause to recognize the REASON for the season – selling products. And, to a lesser extent, ruminating over the year’s bitter disappointments. There’s also a C-plot (sometimes called a “runner”) about Jesus in there.

Okay, that was a lot, so to recap:

1. Lie to your children. You must make them believe your lies.
2. This year I released a comic book, a fantasy/sci-fi novel, and a rap album. I think they are all worth your time or I wouldn’t have linked to them just now.
3. Sales of each have been bitterly disappointing, but I don’t care because they were fun to make! There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

When Swaim told us he wanted to promote his new rap album, we asked him to revisit the worst rap video ever created: Baby Got Book. We did this because we thought it would be interesting to have a talented performer who puts effort into his art litigate this cursed artifact with the eyes of an expert, and not because we’re jealous of Swaim’s multi-faceted portfolio and secretly hate him. It is not that second thing.

According to his website, Dan Smith is a “whiteboyDJ, Pastor, Rapper, Speaker, and All-Around Fungi.” Does it help to know he sometimes likes to spell it “Dan 5mith?” No, that makes it worse? Oh okay. In case you still need more identifying information, please note that Dan’s speaking has been heard at several events throughout the United States.

That should tip most of you off, but for the real dummies here’s the dead giveaway:

“Ohhhhhh, that Dan Smith!” Yeah dingus, welcome to the party. We’re talking Dan 4king 5mith, star of viral Xtian rap video “BABY GOT BOOK.” “B.G.B.” is the perennially cool way to honor the teachings of Christ at Christmastime, which you can tell because I spelled “Christian” with an ‘X.’ So break out your black nail polish and Not Of This World tech deck and do some sweet flick-flips as we revisit a classic yuletide banger!

By the way, if you finish this column and want to hear the full song in all His Glory (Hallowed Be His Beats), please make sure you’re watching the (OFFICIAL) version. It’s very important to both Dan and the Christ Child that no one rips off this unlicensed parody of one of the most famous songs of all time. If you did your own rap about, say, liking big socks? Dan’ll see you in court, asshole, and I’ll be the guy waiting outside with a tire iron and pantyhose over my head praise Jesus.

The video naturally kicks off with a riff on the iconic monologue that opens Mix-a-Lot’s original, but only three words into the proceedings we run into trouble. See, the usual way Becky’s friend tells Becky to look at the big-butted girl over there immediately includes the act of taking God’s name in vain…as in “Oh my God Becky, look at her butt.” Couldn’t you just feel the evil inherent in reading that sentence? For Dan’s purposes (not wanting to burn in Hellfire for eternity after he dies), this will not do.

Thus, our Hip Hop odyssey commences with the words “Oh my goodness,” dripping with judgment and said by a chinless woman to her Black friend who stopped by on a break between photoshoots for college admissions pamphlets. She accuses another woman of looking like “one of those preacher’s girlfriends,” who they “only talk to because she looks like Mother Teresa.” Here is a picture of the woman and a picture of Mother Teresa, but I’m not going to tell you which is which.

“It’s just so huge, it’s gross,” continues the lady I have dubbed Caitlin for obvious reasons. It turns out they’re marveling at the other girl’s big fat Bible and hate her for it, even though they are here in the same church as her and both holding Bibles. Hey, nothing says “Christianity” like finding another tiny degree of difference to gatekeep each other over!

What follows is an epic ode to big Bibles, girthy gospels, strapping scriptures, and some psalms that’ll take your head clean off if you’re not careful. It’s time for whiteboyDJ Dan 5mith…to do his thang.

It turns out Dan’s specific thang is lying sexily in a pile of Bibles like Lester Burnham contemplating statutory rape at his daughter’s basketball game.

Alternately, my man also spits rhymes from the safety of some huddled bookshelves, presumably also stacked with Bibles.

In case you’re wondering about that golden turd hanging off his neck, it’s supposed to be the letters “KJV” for “King James Version.” If you’re wondering why a rapper rapping about how he only likes big Bibles has so far surrounded himself solely with Bibles of reasonable dimension – hey, get fucked. Stuff this Bible down your soul; hope you choke on it.

Damn that’s a sizable Bibable! I bet four to six Sunday School kids had a really shitty afternoon assembling that sucker. If they were smart they Trojan Horsed it, and when Dan falls asleep they will emerge and butcher him for his crimes. Chief among those has to be this shot of Dan’s Mom (or should I say “m0m?”) licking her lips for Jesus and moaning “Me so holy!” into the lens.

In Hollywood, this is sometimes called “spiking camera” or “nightmare fuel.” I know it’s his real Mom, too, because the next line in the video is “Ooh Mama mia, you say you want koinonia?” This can be recognized by those in the know as an Italian way of saying “Ooh, my Mom,” followed by a string of nonsense no one has ever uttered anywhere ever. Go ahead, say “I want koinonia” aloud. Congratulations, you are the first person in history to say that.

I’m not going to publish the Baby’s Got Book (OFFICIAL) lyrics here in full, for I fear the wrath of both God and frivolous litigators. But suffice to say the guy likes big Bibles and doesn’t like small Bibles, and this is something about which he is incapable of lying. It’s Sesamean in its childlike simplicity, like Elmo misunderstanding the difference between small and far away. Frankly, there are moments in here we could use a little more of both.

At one point, Dan raps “I can’t understand how it is that some weenie / wants the Bible on CD!!” Since a digitized Bible is orders of magnitude larger than a physical one in terms of data storage capacity, we are left to assume that Dan doesn’t care what’s IN his ideal Bible or how many words or ideas it contains, just that it is literally, physically large. After all, his favorite Bible is a big wooden crate with not a single Jesus-word anywhere on or in it.

No one will ever convince me that this isn’t a screencap from an I Think You Should Leave sketch, and I’m the guy who embedded it in the article. Sam Richardson is just out of frame to the right, please don’t test me on this.

Smith is also very proud of the fact that there are a LOT of books in the Bible, like individually. After consulting with a handy chart and calculator, he concludes that there are sixty-six books of the Bible, a total with which “Stephen King’s resume just can’t compare.” And technically that’s true, since we’re just talking largeness and King has released sixty-five books, not sixty-six.

That is close though! I guess now it all comes down to who produces future books at a faster rate. King does write a lot, but the Bible is overdue for some sequels. Dan continues to dunk on lesser literature, sneering self-righteously as he tosses the works of Clancy and Grisham aside.

And, of course, because this was never about the teachings of Jesus but rather about grappling with simple size differences, he also angrily hurls a small Bible into the gutter.

Like, if you chanced by on the day this pastor was filming his Christian parody rap, you’d see him dashing a Bible to the ground in front of some beaver graffiti. You’d be all “that’s the word of God, you jerk!” and he’d be all “I know, I’m pro-Bible shitnuts!” and you’d have to drill down and get into a whole thing about it. Realizing this, one might again argue that whiteboyDJ D4n 5m1th is in essence struggling to wrap the mind of a child around the contentious and nuanced theological and ontological issues inherent to liturgical translation. A-men! Double up: A! Men!!

This is all to say, at some point in the video Dan’s rapper character takes a hard turn into Gump Forest, crashing the short bus and starting to act all (that word we don’t say anymore but used to in the early 2000’s and lately assholes seem to be trying to normalize it again on social media – you know the one, the Black Eyed Peas changed their song title and that marked the official switchover? That one. Look, I’ll just say it: dunderpate). The sudden shift pushes the featured actress into a caretaker role, instead of a sexpot one. She teaches Dan scripture from a picture-book, then claps condescendingly when he is able to apply a felt wise man with success.

At the exact same time, the video also includes shots that make it clear these two people eventually started getting flirty at Bible study…

… then got engaged at a subsequent, outdoor Bible study.

Wow lady, talk about some weird power dynamics in a relationship! This illiterate man-child just mastered felt, and you’re already locking that dick down? You two would be the most disturbing fictional couple I’ve ever encountered if I hadn’t already referenced Forrest Gump in this article. Of course, the unspoken reality here is that Dan himself starred, wrote, and directed the video, so ultimately the true power is his. Knowing that, what can we learn about what the Big Book-lovin’ man looks for in a wife? Our only major clue is the line “Baby got it goin’ on / like the wife in Proverbs thirty-one!”

For the uninitiated, Proverbs thirty-one describes an ideal wife, and most Christians encounter it as a cute sign like this one, usually wedged between an “Eat, Pray, Wine” and an “It’s Wine-O’Clock Somewhere!” These signs invariably paraphrase the original text the same way a school of piranhas paraphrases a cow carcass. It’s the equivalent of a pocket Bible that just reads “In the beginning…God…Noah…smite…Isaiah begat Mahershalalhashbaz…Jesus of Nazareth…third day…forgiven.”

Here’s all of Proverbs thirty-one, with a quick synopsis at the bottom if you’re in a hurry.

TL;DR – “Don’t get drunk around bitches. A slave you get to have sex with is cool though, if you can swing it. Fear helps.” – King Lemuel, crediting the hideous thought to his Mom to avoid having to own it himself.

But Dan 5mith and the future Mrs. 5mith aren’t hearin’ the haters, and that’s okay. Even if their coupling is sinful, they were Hellbound regardless, so why not go crazy with it? You see, Dan is left-handed, hence the very elegant custom ring he wears that says “5OUTHPAW.”

Left-handedness, of course, is still considered a sin by most leading Bible scholars and makes Dan’s redemption impossible. He will burn forever in Hell, which frees him to marry whoever he damn well pleases. All that matters to Dan is that they pack a big book and have a high tolerance for whiteboyDJ, a substance now considered toxic by the government and recently linked with a spate of birth defects in Appalachia.

That’s how you call him, incidentally, in case you want to call him. You actually only have to dial “READ – SAL,” but when he answers he asks what you dialed and if you admit you only dialed “READ – SAL” he gets very butthurt about it. He’s also not fond of you bringing up the time he tried to intimidate some Black kids and got rolled like a fucking chump.

These things naturally sting Dan’s pride, because Dan doesn’t consider himself just a parody or novelty rapper. He takes his work seriously. Although Baby Got Book (OFFICIAL) is what made him famous, don’t sleep on Haunted House or Dawg Pound. Both are terrible, and in a way that cannot be dismissed as unserious. Better yet, check out some of Dan’s deep cuts like “Lots of Caucasians” off of the album “The Caucasian Invasion” featuring his rap collective “The Patriarchs.”

FUCK.

I forget though…is Dan Smith actually white? Can we get official confirmation on that?

Check. Great, yeah, no, go back to parody. Parody is where you belong, sir.

Perfect, buddy! This is right at your level, I love it. You can’t tell, but I’m smiling and clapping condescendingly at you.

Right, of course! Why wouldn’t you parody a parody? That’s how you get the funniest stuff.

Okay, sarcasm over. What a fucking loser. Sorry, I can’t even keep the facade going now…four remixes? That well is dry man, move on. This shit is honestly pathetic to the point that I have to end the column now – that’s how much moist ick I’m sitting in.

Unrelatedly, if you liked this piece please find me over at CRACKED! I’m back working there again, making the same kinds of videos I did fifteen years ago and reviving all the old series you onced loved me for! So please do that! PLEASE. This is a call to action asking you to please do that. I will make more After Hours I will I swear. I’ll figure it out just please don’t forget about me for even a second or I start to disap

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Neil Schafer, who prefers a woman less Proverbs 31:25 and more Ezekiel 23:20