Maniac's Top 10 PaRappa the Rapper Songs (as ordained by King Zaid)!

[SBManiac]

What's up, funky fresh people!!!

As we all know, @Zaid challenged me this weekend to make a list of my favorite ten songs from the PaRappa the Rapper franchise for his King for A Day spiel, given my Um Jammer Lammy avatar on this forum's Discord server. The major irony here is that I've never even played the OG PaRappa game, with my only exposure to the franchise beforehand being a tie-in song featured in this very list, the fun fact that the games' character designer, Rodney Alan Greenblatt, also did the cover art for They Might Be Giants' debut album from 1986, and this absurd-ass meme:

 

Now, for this list, I'm going to post both the songs from the official OSTs as well as gameplay from the stages they're featured in for each entry. Also, many thanks to Khinsider for the OST downloads and to the PaRappa the Rapper Fan Wiki for providing me the lore on these very strange and colorful games!

Anyways, before I go and ramble about Brooklyn's Ambassadors of Love yet again, the time has come for...the list!

 

Spoiler

#10: "Power Off! Power On!" from Um Jammer Lammy (1999)

Sadly, despite my choice of Discord avatar, Um Jammer Lammy seems to have my least favorite OST in the franchise as a whole, though by no means is it bad or even mediocre, just a bit less stellar compared to the PaRappa games. 

However, this hard-rocking tune about lefty guitar player Lammy and mentor/guitar shop owner/lumberjack Paul Chuck using chainsaws to make Lammy a new guitar shines no less the brighter for it! I love the complicated rhythms both in the guitar soloing and vocals, as well as the more distorted, hard-rock arrangement of the instrumental. That being said, Chuck's cartoony, almost-but-not-quite-Patrick-Star-like vocals, take me out of the song just a bit given that they don't seem to fit the instrumental at times, but Lammy's intense shredding (seriously, look at the gameplay and tell me you don't have to mash some serious buttons to get her riffs right) more than makes up for it!

Gameplay:

 

 

 

Spoiler

#09: "Prince Fleaswallow's Rap" from PaRappa the Rapper (1996)

 

Easy going reggae toasting vibes here, with Lenky Don providing a smooth and laid-back, if perhaps offensive (idk if the VA is actually Jamaican, if you catch my drift) performance as flea market merchant Prince Fleaswallow. These chill vibes are matched perfectly by the bouncy, midtempo instrumental, and series creator/composer Masaya Matsuura seems to be more in his comfort zone producing rap beats in this game compared to the rock songs in Um Jammer Lammy. Also, PaRappa's call-and-response vocals are just a joy to listen to here! Perhaps not a great representation of Jamaicans and their culture looking back on it, but a fun song regardless!

Gameplay:

 

 

Spoiler

#08: "Got to Move!" from Um Jammer Lammy (1999)

 

The closing stage from 1999's Um Jammer Lammy provides a triumphant rock sing-along, aided by Katy Kat's more-than-capable VA belting the lyrics with soul and passion! I don't have much else to say about this song other than it sounds like the gleaming rock concert finale MilkCan deserved (and probably never got from what I'm seeing on the YouTube recommended tab as to how poorly the game itself was received back then, but more on that another time, perhaps). Maybe a bit standard when it comes to the arrangement, but the songwriting here is strong enough to make me wave my 2.5D lighter around!

Gameplay (bookended by the most ADHD-ass cutscene I've ever seen and the game's credits sequence):

 

 

Spoiler

#07: "BIG" from PaRappa the Rapper 2 (2001)

 

So, for our first entry from the second official PaRappa game from 2001, we have "BIG," a smoothly rapped call-and-response jam from both Ant Guru and PaRappa himself where the instrumental is way more soulful than it has any right to be, given that the song is literally about PaRappa and his crew trying to set their shrink ray to "wumbo" so they can become normal size and stop all the town's food from being turned into noodles! I don't have much to say about the lyrical content here (other than the North American version of the game swaps out Ant Guru's "I am the Lord" with "I am the man" due to I guess oversensitive Christians), but I would recommend checking out the gameplay video for this song before listening to it on its own, since the weird macro/micro visuals (iykyk) add to the strange appeal of this track, as well as being a good example of the kooky world of the PaRappa games in general.

Gameplay (with cutscene):

 

 

Spoiler

#06: "All Master's Rap" from PaRappa the Rapper (1996)

 

So, the penultimate stage in the original PaRappa the Rapper game from 1996 is not only a cavalcade of all the previous masters and flows PaRappa has learned from throughout the game, it's also a cypher for WHO GETS TO BLATHER ROUND, I MEAN GO SHIT, FIRST! No, really. In this stage, you're playing this rhythm game so that PaRappa can use a public restroom first, and I find that fucking hilarious! The beat for this song is also really good and helps suspend my belief over the song's, ahem, topic more than a lesser beat would have.

Gameplay:

 

Okay, so turns out the top 5 songs are gonna need to be a post of their own because my writing for each entry is getting a bit unwieldy lol. Hopefully I can have the second post done by tonight--stay frosty, y'all!