10 Years, 100 Songs: #85. “Cruisin’ Down the Street in My ’64…”

Over the final months of our fine decade, Intensities in Ten Suburbs will be sending the Naughty Oughties out in style with a series of essays devoted to the top 100 songs of the decade–the ones we will most remember as we look back fondly on this period of pop music years down the road. The archives can be found here. If you want to argue about the order, you can’t, because we’re not totally sure what the qualifications are either. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy.

Dynamite Hack were a post-grunge band from Alvin, Texas, who achieved very brief and limited fame at the turn of the millennium for their cover of N.W.A.’s gangsta rap standard “Boyz n the Hood.” It first appeared on a compilation entitled in a tribue to classic hip-hop entitled Take a Bite Out of Rhyme: A Rock Tribute to Rap, and then as the first single from ’00 full-length Superfast, where the song would gain moderate radio support and eventually peak at #12 on the Modern Rock charts. Many would call the southern white boys’ cover of the violent, decadent West Coast anthem patronizing, obnoxious and dumb, if not outright racist — and they’d certainly have a point. But it’s undeniable that it ended up becoming one of the most surprisingly influential pop covers of the decade.

“Boyz n the Hood” at least attempts to be, at heart, a fairly faithful tribute to what made the original so great, just presented in a different framework — that of the patronizing, obnoxious, dumb white kid enamored with the glamor of the N.W.A. persona. And they certainly hit a nerve there, as it’s practically the manifest destiny of the suburban youth of America to idealize the rock stars of their infancy. Around the time of the 21st century, a new generation was coming of age that found the gangsta rap and eventual G-funk stars to be far more compelling figures than either the lame hair metalers or the introspective grunge dudes that dominated popular rock from the late 80s into the early 90s. They had no shot at ever being like them, or ever being able to relate to their experiences, but neither really did anglophilic punk followers or members of the KISS Army in the late 70s. To these kids, N.W.A’s actual struggles and hard-hitting social commentary were really just peripherals to the true appeal of gangsta rap to young, confused white males — which was the confidence, the pure untouchability that all the genre’s leading lights seemed to possess.

Whether or not it can be morally justified, there’s a reason that this song, and not StainD’s “Bring the Noise” or Kottonmouth Kings’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” was the one that became the first major Stupid White Boys Covering Covering a Classic Rap Song hit. And that’s because Dynamite Hack didn’t really sound like they were doing anything outside of themselves to cover the song. Built on a rollicking guitar-picking melody, the thing sounded almost like a campfire singalong — sweet, catchy and pristine, a perfect jumping off point for a folky story song (which in essence is what “Boyz n the Hood” is).

The Hack were wise to drop listeners right into the middle of the song, and to not attempt to cover the entire near-six minute running time of the original. Drawing it out would have played up the joke elements of the cover, instead of just making it sound like a bunch of bored teenagers trying to glamourize their uneventful events of their day by exaggerating on a few key details–a take on the song supported by the fact that it starts out with the narrator getting bitched out by his mom. Meanwhile, structurally, the song takes the original to the next level by building up to one key point in each verse, at which point the narrator’s unimpressed drawl turns into a triumphant shout–“THEN I LET THE APLINE PLAYYYY!! / I WAS PUMPIN’ NEW SHIT BY N.W.A.!!!”–creating a sense of exultation in the lifestyle, missing in the original because it wouldn’t have made sense to seem that enthusiastic about, but entirely appropriate for a remake by losers for whom the supposed daily events of living in South-Central L.A. would seem unbearably exciting. (The similar excitement in the “I reached back like a pimp and I slapped the hoe” shout-along section, though, feels significantly less triumphant — and makes it a tough modern-day hang by any measure.)

In any event, the success of Dynamite Hack opened the floodgates for similar covers by other pasty artists, like Nina Gordon’s “Straight Outta Compton” and Ben Folds’ “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” as well as less inflammatory send-ups like Coldplay’s “Hot in Herre” and Travis Morrison’s “What’s Your Fantasy?” For better or worse, Dynamite Hack did not stick around to really reap the benefits of their moderate success, as Superfast was their last album released to date, and their hip-hop cover tally seems permanently stalled at one. Probably for the best, but as far as troubling ’00s alt covers of rap classics that should probably have been deemed stay-aways, this is still the one most likely to get at least one smile out of you in between scowls.