- Party Fun Action Committee
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Party Fun Action Committee is a music group whose first and only album, Let's Get Serious, is a satirical, comic hip hop album.
Let's Get Serious 
Studio album by Party Fun Action Committee Released July 1, 2003 Recorded The Hit Factory 2003 Genre Various Length 44:31 Label Def Jux
DJX63Producer Jer, Blockhead, Baby Dayliner Professional reviews Contents
Members
The group's members are Blockhead and Jer. Blockhead is a renowned producer who has produced songs for Aesop Rock as well as Cage.
Discography
Let's Get Serious (2003). The album is framed by two white record executives listening to a box of demo tapes and rating each one. They fawn over each selection, even when criticizing some aspect of it. The album is a satire of modern major label music, specifically modern rap genres, and of the out of touch record producers who make the decisions of what artists should be signed.
Track Listing (with fictitious artist listing)
(+ denotes non-musical interlude)
- Intro – 2:20
- Mental Storm by The Mystical Knights of the Vizual Roundtable – 2:22
- Whatchu Know Now by Kornhole – 4:14
- Be My Lady Intro+ – 0:44
- Be My Lady by Flohamed Ali featuring Ja Mellow – 1:55
- I Shoulda Known by A.B.C.D.E.F.Gee – 5:08
- Word Up? Intro+ – 1:13
- Word Up? by Andrew Q and the Free Jazz Crusaders – 1:55
- Beer by The Brothers of the Alpha Pi Kappa Fraternity – 5:17
- Chapstick Intro+ – 1:03
- Chapstick by Sweet Pickles and MC Noel Weissman – 2:12
- I am... by Das Jinglehorse – 5:19
- Peter Pan Intro+ – 0:39
- Peter Pan by The Captain Gowns – 3:27
- Back N Da Daiz by Tony Simon and Jeremy Gibson – 4:18
- Outro / Here Comes the Rock – 2:19
Analysis and targets
Each song on the album attacks a particular genre or subculture.
- Track 2: Mental Storm imitates abstract rappers such as Anticon and Busdriver, co-opting a verbose, highly conceptual, sometimes nonsensical rapid-fire flow. The track also parodies Sir Menalik and other rappers who seem derivative of Dr Octagon era Kool Keith who utilize science fiction and mysticism for their subject matter.
- Track 3: Whatchu Know Now is an assault on rap metal or rapcore bands such as Korn, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.
- Track 5: Be My Lady mocks R&B-inflected hip hop songs, as it seemingly targets the gravelly voice of Ja Rule, and Nelly and a robotic instrumental track indicative of R&B of the late 1990s.
- Track 6: I Shoulda Known not only copies the style of R. Kelly, but also references his legal problems with underage girls, first telling the story of having a sexual encounter with a man in drag, and later of sleeping with a teenage girl. The instrumental is a slow R&B sound that sounds like any number of R&B artists.
- Track 8: Word Up? is a mock-slam poetry track, only extremely simplistic in both content and rhyme scheme, in the style of Sarah Jones, Saul Williams and other performance poets.
- Track 9: Beer is not so much an indictment of any particular rap genre, but rather the "frat-boy mentality," including the often homosexually-tinged ritual of hazing. It references frat-house favorites House of Pain and DMX. This track parodies and is done in the style of 7L and Esoteric and the High and Mighty.
- Track 11: Chapstick addresses Nerdcore hip hop artists and "back pack rap", particularly MC Paul Barman, imitating Barman's multi-syllabic rhyme scheme.
- Track 12: I Am is a spoof of Depeche Mode and synth-pop in general, and mocks men that are weak ("I am a pussy...") and selfish people who have no regard for others ("I am an asshole...").
- Track 13: Peter Pan is the one song on the album that has very little to do with rap at all. It is an a cappella song with several vocal tracks about a man who wishes he could be friends with Peter Pan, Robin Hood and The Little Prince.This is a vague reference to Michael Jackson, and his child-like obsession with Peter Pan as there is no genre of hip-hop music that this song could target. In fact, the two faux-record executives discussing the song at the end of the track acknowledge that this song was probably added in error however this track can also be construed as an ironic metaphor for a majority of rap artists.
- Track 15: Back N Da Daiz mocks the common urge for hip hop artists to make nostalgic songs about the past. The song starts out nostaglic (if insipid) before devolving into a litany of horrible acts the rappers have committed.
- Track 16: Outro/Here Comes the Rock is not a hip hop song but is rather a heavy metal spoof to end the album.
The Return of Party Fun Action Committee
In April 2009, Philadelphia-based producer Yameen released a three-part animated video series online entitled, "The Return of Party Fun Action Committee" featuring PFAC in their roles as A&R representatives Stephen Richardson & Lars Haighmael.
In the fictional narrative of the animated videos, the duo receive a CD of Yameen's new album in the mail and discuss to comedic effect the artists featured on the album including Mike Ladd, Reef The Lost Cauze, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Casual, DLX and Maylay Sparks.
The video series was also released as a free, un-cut audio "podcast" MP3 at Yameen's website.
See also
- Hip hop
- Comedy rap
- Def Jux
External links
Categories:- American hip hop groups
- Definitive Jux albums
- 2003 albums
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