Against all odds, "More Cowbell" has aged pretty well. It's the rare piece of American humor that a fucking hipster such as myself can still find funny even after being co-opted as a rallying cry for a Florida-based baseball team. You know the drill: Christopher Walken plays a record producer in the 70's who believes Blüe Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" will never go gold with insufficient cowbell. Walken's direction might as well have been, "Do your best/worst Christopher Walken impression," and Will Ferrell plays said cowbell with overstated dedication. It was also the only time it was funny when Jimmy Fallon couldn't keep a straight face during a sketch.On "Yasss Bish," Nicki Minaj continues to repent for "Starships" by clawing every beat she picks to ribbons. This beat is by Soulja Boy, who also provides the hook. It goes, "Yasss bish yasss / yasss bish yasss." The song couples a stellar display of rappin-ass rap with a three-word hook. Both are equally important.
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It's basic human nature to assume music that is more technically advanced or just does more is better than music that does less. It's also patently wrong, as success of Soulja Boy, Lil Jon, Ben Klock, The Ramones, and Arlo Guthrie (who once said, "If you use more than three chords, you're just showing off") prove. But this fallacy is why Nicki is going out of her way to remind the entire world she's a very capable emcee. You can be the hookiest rock band on the planet and there will always be some dudes (always dudes) giving you shit because you can't shred.Matt Daniels's Largest Vocabulary In Hip-Hop project does effectively makes the same point, but with a pretty graph. Daniels ranked a bunch of rappers on the number of unique words they utilize in their entire catalog. There are platinum rappers and dudes on both ends of the chart. Canibus's big vocab, for example, could not sustain his career. (There's also Aesop Rock, who outranks Shakespeare.)"More Cowbell" takes place in a bygone era in American music, one in which aviator-clad producers full of sage wisdom got big bucks to extract gold records from the drug-addled brains of rock bands. But hidden behind this silly-ass is an actual gem: it's important to balance the instinct to do more with a healthy dose of less. Someone had a fever on "Yasss Bish," and the only prescription was more Soulja Boy.Now that it's warm out, Skinny Friedman can be heard screaming "YASS BISH!" at random passer-by in Prospect Park. He's on Twitter - @skinny412