Earlier today I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, when I happened upon a video of an old friend’s recent wedding. Specifically, the couple’s first dance as newlyweds. It was lovely – congratulations to the happy couple. As per the addictive clickability of YouTube, the right hand column of recommended videos was enticing enough that I began creeping and crawling my way through increasingly unusual wedding dances and speeches.
Soon enough I struck gold with one video captioned, “Maid of Honour Raps her Speech to Ice Ice Baby at her Sister.”
I stopped, I clicked, I watched. Skip ahead to the one minute mark:
Obviously I realised this was something amazing. I began to dig, and discovered that there are bucketloads of videos just like this. Here’s another wedding speech delivered to the same tune. And another, and another. I soon realised that there was far too much joy in watching these videos to simply watch it alone. So on this balmy October afternoon, please enjoy the fruits of my digging: the internet’s best rap wedding speeches.
Try not to cringe your way through this wedding rendition of Macklemore‘s Thrift Shop.
Ever heard Gangsta’s Paradise like this?
Audience participation makes this rendition of It’s Tricky extra special:
Here’s a great cover of Snoop Dogg‘s Gin and Juice; well, the female lead delivers her verses with slick lyrics and a great flow. The guy’s chorus isn’t so pretty.
This brilliant cover of Biggie‘s Big Poppa sees the two girls donning hoodies and serving up clever, laugh-out-loud funny lyrics.
This one is my favourite of the lot. This dedicated Maid of Honour adapted the entirety of Eminem‘s Without Me with remarkable wit, managing to closely follow a great deal of Em’s dense rhyming scheme, adding sneakers and a hoodie for OG effect.
And let’s face it, there’s nothing quite like watching a room full of old white folks getting down to a song that originally included the lyrics, “So come on dip, bum on your lips, fuck that, cum on your lips and some on your tits.”
Runner up also goes to an Eminem cover, check out this lyrically dextrous woman rapping to The Real Slim Shady with the kind of comedy, aggression and anti-establishment lyrics that’d make Slim proud.
Finally we come to the Holy Grail rapped wedding speeches: The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
It turns out this is something of a wedding phenomenon. Something much bigger than I could have ever imagined.
There are quite literally hundreds, if not thousands of wedding speeches delivered to the Fresh Prince theme song. And when I say literally, I am using the term in the correct sense. Typing “wedding speech rap fresh prince bel-air” into Youtube’s search engine comes up with more than 9,400 videos.
I suppose the Fresh Prince theme song would have been the only acceptance and welcomed rap song in the home of young white families for years, so it makes sense, but the sheer number of these is just ridiculous.
This Maid of Honour donned a pair of sunglasses to rap a new version of the track to her best friend. Skip ahead to 2:30 to watch perhaps the most strangely appropriated rendition you’ll ever hear. This one’s particularly weird too, thanks to the northern English accent and the colourful baseball cap. For those playing at home, he’s even included lyrics on screen.
Here’s one that’s especially awkward because a) the speech giver looks about 11, and b) there’s no music. This one not only has no music, but includes some unbelievably bad beatboxing. Here’s one, and another, and another, where the speech giver again dons shades and pulls her entire posse up behind her. The more black-tie the wedding, the funnier it is. This one, this one and this one not only include shades, but hoodies too, for that extra gangsta effect.
I’ll leave you today with my favourite version of a wedding Fresh Prince speech, delivered at an Indian wedding. The group of bridesmaids go all out, pretending to be huddled together figuring out what to say, while changing from their dazzling saris into sunglasses, hoodies, gold chains and basketball shirts. The verses themselves aren’t the most impressive on this list, but the cultural differences are just too hilarious to leave out.
I hope your Sunday has been as productive as mine.
Image: Youtube