Today is the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans — the city Mayor Ray Nagin wants rebuilt on chocolate. This day is also the four-month and one-week anniversary of “Chocolate Rain.”
“Rain” is the latest (and quickly becoming one of the greatest) video phenom of our viral times. In it Tay Zonday, a geeked-out Barry White impersonator with more than a dozen music videos on YouTube, mesmerizes viewers — 7 million and counting — with the baritoned phrase “chocolate rain.”
But what exactly is he hypnotizing us to think?
“If 1 percent of people get a sense that it's about something deeper, you take that gain and move forward,” said Zonday, whose real name is Adam Bahner, said in a story in the Honolulu Advertiser last week.
Verses about the “fear your leaders can’t control,” prison, the “dirty secrets of economy,” insurance rates, gated communities, “flippin’ cars in France,” and cleaning “sewers out beneath Mumbai” are in plain sight — laid even more bare by Zonday’s Yamaha skills.
Bahner is getting his Ph.D. in American studies from the University of Minnesota. He calls it “going to conservatory.” He’s got a MySpace page. He’s given a dozen interviews. He performed “Rain” on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” earlier this month. He got spoofed by John Mayer on VH1’s “Best Week Ever.” And he wrote a song about the “isms.”
Namely, racism, classicism and even globalism.
http://www.politico.com/helenaandrews/
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