Steve 'Flash' Juon“Are you being sarcastic, dude? I don’t even know any more.”
With that let me introduce you to Hentai Dude. As with a lot of rappers I look into any more, I stumbled across his work by accident, with the accident here being that I watch anime and review rap music. Apparently that was enough of a cross cultural intersection for the algorithm that controls us to recommend “OWO What’s This?” to me. Here’s a few quick facts if you’re not a consumer of shows like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun and Fullmetal Alchemist though.
- Hentai has generally come to mean anything Japanese with a pornographic use, although it tends to specifically refer to manga, anime, OVA (original video animation) and merchandise related to any of the above. It can also be used to pejoratively describe someone as a pervert.
- OWO (or the related uWu) is meant to look like a facial expression of shock or surprise. One Urban Dictionary calls it “the mating call of horny weebs” – with weeb itself being shorthand for “weeaboo” i.e. a white person obsessed with Japanese culture.
- Hentai Dude’s real name is Colin, and he could be described as a weeaboo if you’re into giving people labels and making fun of them using those artificial constructs.
“Jacking off to 2D titty, change reality fo’ sho'”
Here’s why I’m having a Simpsons style “I don’t even know any more” moment. I can’t tell whether “OWO What’s This?” is meant to be a genuine celebration of his lifestyle or a WAY over-the-top joke mocking anime fans. It’s hard enough to be an anime fan as it is because pretty much everything Hentai Dude says on this album is already the public perception — lonely white guys who obsess over Japanese 2D women with enormous boobs. They’re shut-ins who live in their mother’s basement and sleep with body pillows. Dude claims it’s a parody on “Tokyo Chopp” but it’s really hard to tell that he’s not 100% sincere in his bars.
“Tell me that you lovin senpai girl I’m knowin that it’s true
Cuz you actin all moe and vanilla in my view
So this one’s for them waifus
Straight 2D flexin, my laifu
If you fuck with Hentai, you my Dude
Let the beat ride out, keep it nice and smooth”
That sure seems sincere to me. If you couldn’t already tell I’m not impressed by people who use the terms “weeb” or “weeaboo,” any more so than I was growing up hearing the terms “nerd” or “dork” thrown around. In a free society we can like and enjoy anything we want — anime, movies, science fiction, video games, et cetera — and we shouldn’t be shamed for our enjoyment of it. If that was Hentai Dude’s point I’d be into it, but it’s impossible for me to discern whether he’s a serious rapper who just wants “H” consumers to get respect OR if he’s not-so-secretly engaging in a very public shaming of them. His whole persona could be deliberately excessive as a way of looking down his nose at weebs and mocking them.
The fact he applied this formula to a shameless cut and paste of his own bars over Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me” and called it “Moe Ride” seems to imply the latter. It’s a joke and Hentai Dude is laughing at you as opposed to celebrating anime. If he was serious about this he wouldn’t do something so deliberately lazy and easy to see for exactly what it is. AND YET… as rappers go this Dude wouldn’t be in the bottom 10 of anyone’s list of the worst of all time. Mechanically his flow is fine. Lyrically his bars make sense and thematically they actually represent the topic well. Some of these songs actually bump. I can listen to “Shoujo Contract” on repeat easily.
So should we take “OWO What’s This?” seriously? If you’re an anime fan (and I am) you have to decide if he’s exaggerating a stereotype for the lolz or if he’s really living that “H” life to the max. Then you can make a decision on whether or not it’s offensive. I’m going to put that aside though and judge strictly by the definitions of what makes a good rapper, and if he was applying these same skills to any other topics, you could judge him as “aight.” For a white dude rapping about Japanese culture “aight” is more than I expected. I don’t know if he’s being sarcastic or not but personally I’m going to let it slide and say Hentai Dude isn’t offending me as a rapper or otherwise.