Cassetteboy - Cameron's Conference Rap
October 1, 2014 8:17 AM Subscribe
"I'm hardcore and I know the score
And I am disgusted by the poor..." [NSFWish lyrics]
Today, changes in UK legislation are coming into effect, allowing the use of copyrighted works in parodies. To celebrate, cassetteboy has released a rap video constructed from the speeches of David Cameron, the UK's Conservative Prime Minister
Today, changes in UK legislation are coming into effect, allowing the use of copyrighted works in parodies. To celebrate, cassetteboy has released a rap video constructed from the speeches of David Cameron, the UK's Conservative Prime Minister
NB: lots of swearing in the lyrics. I've just asked Team Mod to put a warning on the link, as I forgot to. Sorry for the omission.
posted by metaBugs at 8:25 AM on October 1, 2014
posted by metaBugs at 8:25 AM on October 1, 2014
"We don't care if you're driven to despair /
Don't you dare say it's not fair."
I could actually hear that in the local Mitch McConnell US Senate ads.
posted by DigDoug at 8:35 AM on October 1, 2014
Don't you dare say it's not fair."
I could actually hear that in the local Mitch McConnell US Senate ads.
posted by DigDoug at 8:35 AM on October 1, 2014
Is he really saying motherfuckers? What was the context of that in the original speech?
posted by dios at 8:44 AM on October 1, 2014
posted by dios at 8:44 AM on October 1, 2014
That's a cunning edit I believe. Although Cameron has a bit of a gob on him, viz. "Too many tweets makes a twat", "Effin' Tories", etc...
posted by sobarel at 8:48 AM on October 1, 2014
posted by sobarel at 8:48 AM on October 1, 2014
I actually think Cameron has benefited from being such an insubstantial figure that he's difficult to parody. He's backed by a parade of grotesques and loathsome hatchet men, but Cameron himself? There's just no there there.
posted by sobarel at 8:52 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by sobarel at 8:52 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
Just a question from a confused Yank, how the hell does Cameron stay in power? In the left in such disarray that the UK is left with a Stephen Harper situation?
posted by Ber at 8:54 AM on October 1, 2014
posted by Ber at 8:54 AM on October 1, 2014
Ber: This is an oversimplification but...
Prior to the 2011 fixed-term act elections were a little weirder in the UK than in US, and sort of happened whenever the prime minister wanted one (that's an oversimplification, other things could trigger them). The last election was in 2010 and no party could command a majority. There was some backlash against the Labour party that had been in power since 1997, over issues like the war in Iraq and increased economic insecurity related to the 2008 crisis and the Eurozone crisis among other things. So both Labour and the Conservatives tried to woo the Liberal Democrats - a third party that had attracted a surge of support by pushing on both civil liberties and more lower-case L liberal economic policies. In the end they ended up in a coalition goverment with the Conservatives. There is a widespread perception in the UK that the lib dems sold their soul in this partnership and gained relatively little while enabling a hard conservative swing in UK policy. The Lib-Dems got hammered in the 2011 local elections.
The next elections are in May 2015, so we'll see what happens.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:10 AM on October 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
Prior to the 2011 fixed-term act elections were a little weirder in the UK than in US, and sort of happened whenever the prime minister wanted one (that's an oversimplification, other things could trigger them). The last election was in 2010 and no party could command a majority. There was some backlash against the Labour party that had been in power since 1997, over issues like the war in Iraq and increased economic insecurity related to the 2008 crisis and the Eurozone crisis among other things. So both Labour and the Conservatives tried to woo the Liberal Democrats - a third party that had attracted a surge of support by pushing on both civil liberties and more lower-case L liberal economic policies. In the end they ended up in a coalition goverment with the Conservatives. There is a widespread perception in the UK that the lib dems sold their soul in this partnership and gained relatively little while enabling a hard conservative swing in UK policy. The Lib-Dems got hammered in the 2011 local elections.
The next elections are in May 2015, so we'll see what happens.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:10 AM on October 1, 2014 [6 favorites]
As an aside, the office of Prime Minister is one of those things that just fascinates me about the British system of government and its uncodified constitution. The PM is the head of government, while the monarch is the head of state, but the position basically just exists by convention, because that's how they've always done it. It just sort of evolved over time that the monarch appoints somebody who can control Parliament to run things. By tradition this is the leader of the party that can command a majority of the votes in the House of Commons (or the leader of a coalition of parties that can do so), but in theory the Queen could appoint anybody to the position. It would provoke a constitutional crisis and almost certainly not work, but it could in theory happen.
There are all sorts of little details that I find fascinating- like did you know that technically the PM gets the residence at #10 Downing street by virtue of also holding the office of First Lord of the Treasury, not just because s/he's PM?
posted by Wretch729 at 9:20 AM on October 1, 2014
There are all sorts of little details that I find fascinating- like did you know that technically the PM gets the residence at #10 Downing street by virtue of also holding the office of First Lord of the Treasury, not just because s/he's PM?
posted by Wretch729 at 9:20 AM on October 1, 2014
"The position basically just exists by convention, because that's how they've always done it. It just sort of evolved over time."
That sums up Britain's unwritten constitution rather neatly.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:24 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
That sums up Britain's unwritten constitution rather neatly.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:24 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
And Prime Minister was really used in a pejorative sense for a long time (i.e. as an accusation the leader of the government was taking too much power) before it became the official title.
posted by sobarel at 9:26 AM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by sobarel at 9:26 AM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
That's a cunning edit I believe.
Cassetteboy is really good at phonetic editing. Took one of the "suckers", grafted a well-chosen breathy F on after removing the sibilant S, then threw a quick "mother" on top of it so it all blends. It's a lot of fun to do and very satisfying when you pull it off well--this was done extremely well. There are problems elsewhere, such as phrases with difficult abrupt or robot-like tonal shifts, but I'm happy to completely blame Cameron for the source material rather than the editor for that one. This track's a lot of fun. Happy Fair Use Day, UK!
posted by Spatch at 9:32 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
Cassetteboy is really good at phonetic editing. Took one of the "suckers", grafted a well-chosen breathy F on after removing the sibilant S, then threw a quick "mother" on top of it so it all blends. It's a lot of fun to do and very satisfying when you pull it off well--this was done extremely well. There are problems elsewhere, such as phrases with difficult abrupt or robot-like tonal shifts, but I'm happy to completely blame Cameron for the source material rather than the editor for that one. This track's a lot of fun. Happy Fair Use Day, UK!
posted by Spatch at 9:32 AM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]
And's impressive since it seems to be based on the speech Cameron gave today.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:54 AM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by MartinWisse at 9:54 AM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]
Absolutely. How far in advance are the full draft texts of conference speeches released to the media, do we know? Cassetteboy are hardly without contacts these days, so they may have been able to get some of the work done in advance. But even if that were the case, it's an incredibly quick turnaround. I think this is better than a lot of their more recent stuff, which has seemed a little bit bored with itself at times.
posted by howfar at 11:40 AM on October 1, 2014
posted by howfar at 11:40 AM on October 1, 2014
That's incredibly well done. Though I imagine that having the beat there smooths over some rough junctions that would stand out in speech without music.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:48 AM on October 1, 2014
posted by benito.strauss at 11:48 AM on October 1, 2014
Good God, I found a YouTube comment that I liked:
"I'm not impressed. All you did was take a tory speech and put a beat in the background..."
posted by antiwiggle at 1:42 PM on October 1, 2014 [14 favorites]
"I'm not impressed. All you did was take a tory speech and put a beat in the background..."
posted by antiwiggle at 1:42 PM on October 1, 2014 [14 favorites]
The above-the-fold part of this post didn't do a good job of saying what it was about, so I almost passed it by, but I've listened to it ... um ... several times now. My favorite line, for no reason that I can explain, was "Let the beat drop."
posted by Wolfdog at 2:28 PM on October 1, 2014
posted by Wolfdog at 2:28 PM on October 1, 2014
"How far in advance are the full draft texts of conference speeches released to the media, do we know? Cassetteboy are hardly without contacts these days, so they may have been able to get some of the work done in advance."
Cameron's people may well have issued advance copies of the speech just before he stood up to help accredited reporters do their job, but certainly not soon enough to help out Cassette Boy in any useful way. Official "leaks" for teasers in this morning's UK news programmes hinted at the content of the speech, but said nothing about its precise wording - as is almost always the case.
Any leaked draft which reached Cassette Boy any sooner than that would almost certainly have reached the newspapers too, and we've seen no scoops in print to suggest that happened. As I understand it, the details of a political speech at this level will often be being redrafted right up to the last minute anyhow. Armando Iannucci's meticuloulsly-researched political satires The Thick of It and Veep certainly suggest that's the case.
Also, it's the audio that matters on an edit like this, not the written text. Any tiny deviation between the script and the words Cameron actually spoke would have scuppered any advance preparation Cassette Boy had attempted anyway, so I'm betting they simply recorded the audio from TV or radio as it went out live and set to work the minute Cameron sat down. And they did a great job.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:43 PM on October 1, 2014
Cameron's people may well have issued advance copies of the speech just before he stood up to help accredited reporters do their job, but certainly not soon enough to help out Cassette Boy in any useful way. Official "leaks" for teasers in this morning's UK news programmes hinted at the content of the speech, but said nothing about its precise wording - as is almost always the case.
Any leaked draft which reached Cassette Boy any sooner than that would almost certainly have reached the newspapers too, and we've seen no scoops in print to suggest that happened. As I understand it, the details of a political speech at this level will often be being redrafted right up to the last minute anyhow. Armando Iannucci's meticuloulsly-researched political satires The Thick of It and Veep certainly suggest that's the case.
Also, it's the audio that matters on an edit like this, not the written text. Any tiny deviation between the script and the words Cameron actually spoke would have scuppered any advance preparation Cassette Boy had attempted anyway, so I'm betting they simply recorded the audio from TV or radio as it went out live and set to work the minute Cameron sat down. And they did a great job.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:43 PM on October 1, 2014
"I come here with flows right from the top" is a brilliant line.
posted by cthuljew at 1:21 AM on October 2, 2014
posted by cthuljew at 1:21 AM on October 2, 2014
Just a question from a confused Yank, how the hell does Cameron stay in power? In the left in such disarray that the UK is left with a Stephen Harper situation?
As others have said, thus far there has not been an electoral attempt to unseat him. It is worth noting that the left is quite weak here: Labour presided over the financial crisis and while it would be unfair to argue that it was their fault, that is the association most have in their mind. The conservatives on the other hand have presided over a weak and not very nice recover, but a recovery nonetheless. They are ahead in economic polls despite having shown a remarkable lack of progress on that front (and arguably undoing progress Labour was making before being ousted).
Still, the electoral maths is against them. They currently rule with the help from the liberal democrats, and no incumbent party in the UK has grown their share of the vote in the next election. At the very least, they'll have a very weak majority if they have one in 2015. My guess is that we'll see the Labour party having the most seats, but not an absolute majority.
This speech is a remarkable one, in that Cameron promised that he would get rid of the deficit in two years, then introduce 7 bn of tax cuts. So 50 billion of savings in 2 years, then 7 billion more? I have no idea how many people believe this is credible, given their utter failing to deliver on their 2010 promises re-the economy.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 2:11 AM on October 2, 2014
As others have said, thus far there has not been an electoral attempt to unseat him. It is worth noting that the left is quite weak here: Labour presided over the financial crisis and while it would be unfair to argue that it was their fault, that is the association most have in their mind. The conservatives on the other hand have presided over a weak and not very nice recover, but a recovery nonetheless. They are ahead in economic polls despite having shown a remarkable lack of progress on that front (and arguably undoing progress Labour was making before being ousted).
Still, the electoral maths is against them. They currently rule with the help from the liberal democrats, and no incumbent party in the UK has grown their share of the vote in the next election. At the very least, they'll have a very weak majority if they have one in 2015. My guess is that we'll see the Labour party having the most seats, but not an absolute majority.
This speech is a remarkable one, in that Cameron promised that he would get rid of the deficit in two years, then introduce 7 bn of tax cuts. So 50 billion of savings in 2 years, then 7 billion more? I have no idea how many people believe this is credible, given their utter failing to deliver on their 2010 promises re-the economy.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 2:11 AM on October 2, 2014
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posted by The Bellman at 8:24 AM on October 1, 2014 [5 favorites]