That alone is no calamity. Toss in the nomination of Organized Rhyme, though, and one has to wonder if lunatics had taken over the Academy. OR, it pains to recall, was how comedian Tom Green found his first 15 seconds of fame, rapping as MC Bones.
(Green’s rhyming skills? On par with his acting chops: “I lay more chicks than Mother Goose / Pass the OJ, ’cause I got juice.”) Their novelty hit Check the OR had all the artistic merit of Kris Kross crossed with Marky Mark, but won CARAS’s heart anyways.
What should have been a one-time gaffe started a trend: from 1993 onward, the history of the Junos’ rap category reads like a dramedy of errors. (Nominees for the rap category are not determined by sales numbers, and are chosen by a “panel of experts;” winners are voted on by CARAS’s members. Last year, there were 1,632 eligible voters.
) Among the lowlights: And the Juno goes to...
You must be kidding. Too Bad To Be True, a quartet of smooth-cheeked Toronto teens (their eldest member was 16 at the time), claimed the hardware for their single despite should-have-been-obvious questions about the fitness of young boys flipping lines like, “This goes out to all you girls out there with a one track mind / ’cause girls like you are hard to find.” CARAS’s bigger boo-boo, though, was failing to nominate Snow in the Juno rap category.
(He won the reggae award that year.) Granted, Snow — an Irish roughneck who performed in a put-on West Indian patois (“Pure black people man that’s all I-man know / Yeah, me shoes are-a tear up an-a my toes used to show-a / Where me-a born in-a the one Toronto ”) — was basically the northern Vanilla Ice, but he moved records like no Canadian urban performer before or since. That alone is no calamity.
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