One of the year’s strangest collaborations has been anointed and it comes courtesy of South Korean pop star Psy and The Doggfather himself, Snoop Lion.
The American rapper and the K-pop star have teamed up for a new single entitled ‘Hangover’, which sees the pair paying props to the time-honoured tradition of going and getting absolutely blind in what is a contender for one of the weirdest and worst songs of the year, if not ever.
Weirder even than that time Jack White produced Insane Clown Posse covering a song by Mozart? Well not quite, since the aim of the crossover is pretty clear – to help push Snoop and Psy into each other’s respective music markets – but the track is still a diabolical mix of pop music cliches.
Dancehall horns, shonky trap beats, auto-tuned vocals – it’s all here, along with some pretty dreadfully lazy rhymes. Such as Snoop’s “Smoke like a broke stove/Don’t quit, take flight/I can’t remember last night” and not to be outdone, Psy’s “eeny, meanie, miny, moe/catch a lady by the toe.” “Snoop’s calculation was 8 hours of shooting and 10 hours of partying.”
“What I thought was I should refresh myself, and people, that I’m doing something different, so I thought about maybe changing genres,” Psy tells MTV of the new collaboration, which comes complete with an intentionally barmy video which follows Snoop Dogg and Psy’s hedonistic misadventures in the latter’s native Korea.
“Snoop and I both had only 18 hours,” says Psy of the shoot; “Snoop’s calculation was 8 hours of shooting and 10 hours of partying.”
Beginning with the charming visage of the ‘Gangnam Style’ singer barfing into the porcelain, the clip only gets trashier from there, as the duo drink heavily, hit on middle aged women in a karaoke bar, drink some more, start a kung fu riot, pool sharking, and did we mention they drink an awful lot of alcohol?
The ‘Hangover’ video, which follows hot on the heels of ‘Gangnam Style’ becoming the first video to crack 2 billion YouTube views, has already attained viral status, having earned over 14 million views (and counting) since its premiere over the weekend.
The track has already drawn some hefty negative sentiments from fans from both the Snoop and Psy camps, as The Independent reports. “This is the biggest insult to the history of rap since the birth of Kanye West,” writes one YouTube commenter, while a fan on twitter criticised the song as “the biggest load of trash I’ve ever seen, the music is awful, Snoop Dogg (Lion) and Korea doesn’t work…”
Psy and Snoop Doog also buddied up to promote their new team-up on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in a segment where they hit up a local karaoke bar with the late night TV host after being taxied there by Kimmel’s mother. Much like ‘Hangover’ itself, it’s an idea that on paper would have marketing execs foaming at the mouth, but in execution, is a bit of an affront to the aural and visual senses (let alone cultural stereotypes). Watch in full below, if you can stomach it.
