H/T to Maggie Koerth-Baker at BoingBoing (and I’m still a bit astonished I didn’t see it at Ghost of a Flea first . . .) [In-line update: of course he got there months ago. Silly of me to think otherwise.]
From the comments at BoingBoing, it’s apparently called “Chap-Hop“.
For some British rappers, nothing goes better with laying down rhymes than a gin and tonic and a Sunday afternoon stroll.
They have created chap-hop, fusing the American urban musical genre with the imagined lifestyle of the British upper classes. And this coastal town, with its candy-colored Victorian villas and seafront promenade, is the setting for the latest hip-hop feud.
In chap-hop videos, hip-hop tropes are subtly undermined: Barely clothed models are replaced with a ladylike redhead in a summer frock, cricket bats are substituted for uzis.
Professor Elemental, a self-styled “Steampunk Mad Professor” and leading chap-hop MC, is one of its top exponents. He is easy to spot in the Marwood Café here, even amid its décor of spectacle-wearing stuffed owls and dismembered mannequins. Clad in Victorian-explorer garb, complete with pith helmet, he is eager to talk about his planned trip across the Atlantic.
