The Fat Boys Are Back For Halloween, But Are They ‘Ready For Freddy?’
The Fat Boys were plenty known for having fun and being able to laugh at themselves by 1988. Since their arrival onto the nascent Hip-Hop scene in the early 80s; Kool Rock-Ski, Buff Love, and Prince Markie Dee had become pioneers in charting the blueprint for rap artists to release full length albums, market themselves to wider audiences, and even how to parlay that success into film roles like 1987’s Disorderlies.
So it’s no surprise that when the producers of Nightmare On Elm Street 4 came knocking, The Fat Boys were absolutely game for some Halloween shenanigans.
‘Are You Ready For Freddy?’ sees The Fat Boys outside the Freddy Krueger house at night as they talk to a lawyer who informs them that they have to spend the night inside Freddy’s house in order to earn inheritance money.
It’s also mentioned that Freddy is Prince Markie Dee’s uncle that they don’t like to talk about. Which immediately raises all sorts or Fat Boys canonical implications that I’d rather not even attempt to sort out.
Dressed in the same styled & striped sweaters as Freddy, The Fat Boys creep around the dilapidated home, trying their best to stay out of trouble and out of the way from Freddy.
But we all know that’s not going to happen, as Freddy pops up right from the start to drop some bars:
Freddy Krueger's the name
You know my game
Elm Street's the place, if you've got the time
Listen to this, you'll bust a rhyme
He truly is the real sultan of spooky.
The Fat Boys obviously do much better. But their rhymes just amount to recapping the plots of the first three films. Which is fine. This isn’t some abstract concept alum, it’s a song on the Nightmare On Elm Street 4 soundtrack.
With that as the bar, ‘Are You Ready For Freddy?’ hits all the marks you would hope for. The conceit of having to stay the night in a haunted house is as classic as it gets. The design of the house and its rooms are spot-on and perfectly invoke the vibe of the films.
Then there is the fact that they were able to get Robert Englund himself to not only reprise the role of Freddy, but provide vocals for a rap song, is a premium that producers were probably overjoyed to be able to actually capitalize on.
I mean, you don’t see Jason or Michael Myers cameoing in a Kurtis Blow video. Freddy, especially around the release of Elm Street 4, was seen as the MTV era Horror figurehead and it’s the series’ embrace of Pop Culture and allowing their big, scary bad guy to do things like be in commercials and do music videos that helped to cement that reputation.
Like a lot of seemingly random Pop Culture mash-ups, it all boils down to being in the right place at the right time. For The Fat Boys, they were at the perfect point in their careers for being courted by producers to be involved with film tie-ins. Whereas Freddy was in the perfect place, after 4 movies, to start spreading his claws and dip his blades into this hot new rap thing.
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