Fight for your right to High tea

Like many of his generation, the puppy that would later become Lord Bassington-Bassington was rather taken with the sounds of Hip Hop. But even if he did spend part of his upbringing in a block of flats, in an area that would later be seen as a ghetto (by Norwegian standards anyway), he soon lost his taste for rap. The misogyny, glorification of crime and drugs and racial hatred that runs rampant in Hip Hop just became too much.

There were other reasons as well. Lord Bassington-Bassington had been taught by his English teacher to detest all forms of what he (the English teacher) called ”sub-standard English”. Rap has been described as ”the most literary form of music”, but it is mostly performed by functional illiterates, who do their best to mutilate the English language. And as this English teacher happened to be a Black American gentleman of great learning and culture, Lord Bassington-Bassington has kept with him a distaste of most Hip Hop, where, to steal a point from American scholar John McWhorter, Blacks are portrayed almost exactly as they were in the propaganda of the Ku Klux Klan.

Still, Lord Bassington-Bassington has never really lost his taste for good beats and catchy rhymes. So imagine his relief when the last issue of The Chap arrived here at Bassington Manor, carrying an article about up and coming artist Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer. One of the forefigures of an exciting new genre called Chap Hop.



Trading SUV’s for bicycles, hooded sweatshirts for boating blazers and crack pipes for real pipes, Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer has arrived on the scene in a cloud of tea leaves and scented pipe tobacco. His Chap Hop style is truly unique, and is both a clever parody of Hip Hop while his love of the form shows through. A bit like Goldie Looking Chain, but with better rhymes – and better tailors.

Mr. B’s signature song remains his tasteful take on that seminal “gangster rap” song, Black Persons With Attitude’s Straight Outta Compton, which should be familiar to anyone with the slightest interest in the popular culture of the last century. Mr. B's version of the song, though, is surely an improvement.



Another Mr. B highlight, “A Piece of My Mind”, shows that Chap Hop is to Hip Hop what classical Roman oratory is to Tourette’s syndrome.



And not only does Chap Hop provide articulate and insightful MC’ing, it has even given the world a taste of cultured turntablism.



Lord Bassington-Bassington is planning to become an enthusiastic Chap-Hopper, and has just submitted a request with his better three-quarters, Lady Mju, for permission to purchase a striped boating blazer. May he? Please?