Microsoft R&B Hit Wizard.

"This song is about... *Drugs *Sex *Coffee *Religion *Drag Queens"

"This song will use *2 chords *1 chord *No Chords, just drones and tremolos"

Hmmmmmm....

Also "Moddafokka" is perhaps the worst transliteration of an accent that I have ever encountered.

Readers can you spot the deliberate mistake here?

"Bush sounds" = the noises little kids make when they're pretending to fire laser guns. "Psheeew, psheeew!"

I suspect "Bush sounds" = jungle noises, and not in the drum & bass sense.

NOT the worst if you consider they were actually going for "Fozzy Bear Swearing".

And then Michael Dukakis can start rockin' the ice!

The key point is that it's funny, which it is. Very.

It would work just as well with other genres like ska punk, euro metal or IDM.
Are you saying the person who did it was having a go at black people? That's not how I took it at all.

I love Hip Hop but not R&B (yet) BTW. I think the joke applies more to hip hop really.

I think they're actually taking the piss out of the very narrow sub-genre of R'n'B/Hip-hop which does match this stereotype.
Gangstas in gold driving beamers, talking about bitches/nighas (is that how they spell it?) and having expensive looking videos set in exotic locations and swearing a lot. Bling-bling kerching.
To me there do seem to be a lot of videos (particularly) like that. Some of them are great, some rubbish.

If the author thinks that's all there is to RBHH then he or she is very wrong.

I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but I know enough about the music that's having its ribs tickled to know that the joke is not the whole truth. It's exaggerated and simplified to make it funny.

If the person who made it thought you couldn't do the same thing for rock they'd be wrong. It would probably be best to narrow down the joke to an easily identifiable sub set of rock that people who don't pay much attention to it, ie most of the planet, would understand.

In other words, any humor you find comes in the idea, implicit in the reductionism, that outside of those elements there's nothing more to get. Which is dead wrong and not funny as far as I'm concerned and does smack a bit of racism.

Mei are you 12 or so? Because if you're over 16 I'd like to call you a fuckface.

I don't know if that's your view of HH/R&B or if you're saying that's the view of the person who made the joke. It's certainly NOT what I think when I listen to Hip Hop. I don't particularly think about people's race or color when I listen to music, it's usually irrelevant.

I wouldn't laugh at something which I thought was rascist, but this picture didn't appear to me to be rascist. Maybe I was wrong.

Now I've gone back and looked at it carefully.
Based on my limited knowledge the person who has stolen a melody from Queen is Vanilla Ice, who's white.
Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Sean Jean didn't steal a riff from Led Zeppelin because Jimmy Page gave it to him, by playing it again on the song (can't remember its name) but the riff was from Kashmere.
Destiny's Child or Eternal covered RHCP's Under The Bridge and covered it badly - I don't know what race either of those bands are. Crazy Town stole a RHCP riff for 'Butterfly' I think, I think Crazy Town are white but I might be wrong and anyway RHCP got a writing credit for it.
I remember a few years ago hearing a song that used the knight Rider theme and thinking it was cool but cheesy, don't know who did that song. Punjabi MC has a song at the moment with another bit of the riff, from his name I'd guess he's English of Indian descent?

The picture does use the word 'Brotha's' which I didn't notice before. I can see how some people would find this offensive.

I'm going to quote myself now because I want to make something clear:
Gangstas in gold driving beamers, talking about bitches/nighas (is that how they spell it?) and having expensive looking videos set in exotic locations and swearing a lot. Bling-bling kerching

These are words regularly used in real songs. They're NOT words I'd use. Apart from anything else I'd sound totally stupid if I did.
When I said this is how 'they' spell it I meant the people who write the songs or who write down the lyrics for the record sleeves.

Martin said: Are you entirely comfortable with the "Bush sounds" bit, Meirion?
I have no idea what 'Bush Sounds' are. Looking at the other posts no one else does either. Ally says she doesn't know but (jokingly?) thinks it might be something to do with George Bush. Stevem says Chris Morris, I know who he is but can't remember him saying anything like that and a quick google doesn't show anything. Nate thinks they're like lazer zap sounds.
Maybe it's something to do with the band Bush. They say they're named after Shepards Bush, but Bush is also a euphemism for vagina so maybe it's something to do with that? I've got no idea really.

Martin, you suspect they're sounds you'd hear in a jungle, like creaking tress and snakes and distant elephant calls? That's a bit of a stretch but you might well be right, I don't know. Myself i've only heard the word 'bush' used to refer to the Australian Outback, not any other jungles. Are there any R&B or Hip-hop songs with jungle sounds on?

Sorry Sterling, I'm a fuckface.
I've already said I know there's more to the music than the joke suggests, but jokes are always oversimplifications.
Your analysis of why I laughed must be flawed because your conclusion is wrong.

The person who made the joke might think that the music is defined by his parameters. I'm laughing (partly) because I know it can seem as if the music is defined by those parameters.

What I found funniest though was the idea that there could be a Microsoft application and associated wizards that would do these sort of things. Also I was laughing at some of the words/ideas written down totally out of context ie on a computer input form rather than spoken by a rapper. There's a similar joke from a TV show where a newsreader reads out the lyrics to some soppy ballad in formal queen's english.

General apologies to anyone here equates R&B or Hip Hop with a particular race. I don't. They're types of music.

If someone said "All R&B music is shit" and they meant the musical genre then that is not racist.

If someone said "All music made by black people is shit" that IS racist.