The Label’s Trying to Kill Me: Wale, Freddie Gibbs, Pill, Poochie, and Other Totally Outrageous Paradigms (Part I)
November 11th, 2009
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn’t great, but what right do you have to complain?
Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
Bart: What? They’re giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them!
Comic Book Guy: Worst. Episode. Ever.
A few years ago, before Lonely Island completely flipped the archetype for rap satire in the post-Weird Al age, several Hollywood executives and agents expressed interest in turning The Passion of the Weiss into an Internet Television show, something akin to The Daily Show but for music–with parodies, interviews and trips to far-flung festivals for drug binges on the corporate dime. Considering the economic crash hadn’t occurred and corporate brass were willing to throw around wads of cash at this new-fangled Internet thing, it seemed like a decent enough idea. Lame, I know, but there was a point to the phrase, “get rich or die trying,” and journalism certainly wasn’t aiding or abetting.
So with apprehension, I took a few meetings, with the goal of getting the money to turn my notion into a concept and later turn it into an idea. At first, the executives filled my head up with all the stereotypical buzz words you’d expect to get a rookie hyped: creative freedom, spontaneity, “wild and off-the wall” humor. Right. I even went ahead and filmed/recorded a few things: an interview with Ghostface where we attempted to get high before UCLA security stymied the plan, a parody rap song, and other scatter-brained ephemera that probably weren’t very funny. Somehow, the meetings progressed to the point where getting money for a pilot seemed like a reasonable leap.
