Notorious PHD: A real life Park Slope rapper!

 Dr. Phd, Center / Photo via Gothamist

...And the beat goes on.

Imagine, if you will, that you're an unreconstructed liberal white dude who teaches African-American Studies in the Bronx, but lives in Park Slope.  You take public transportation, of course, which is a bitch of a commute. But you don't care, because you use the time to grade papers, plan your lectures and, most importantly, to figure out how to make your lessons relevant to students. 

When you first moved to Park Slope, there was nary a kick-ass frozen yogurt shop to be found.  Sackett Street was colloquially known as Crackhead Street. You were there before the first lesbians arrived. Maggie Gyllenhaal hadn't even been born yet.  Life was good.

Life was...like the Bronx, actually! Hey! That's something your students should know about!  The first tenet of being an unreconstructed liberal is that you have to understand gentrification is what's destroying this country, even though (and this is a scientifically-proven fact) liberals cause gentrification! (Also, Lesbians, FWIW).  So, how can you communicate this to the good people of The Bronx in a way that they can digest?  You know, speak to them on their own level, while respecting their culture? It's important that they know about the class system!  

Of course, you don't have the right cassette tape in your Sony Walkman right now, but if you did, the easiest thing to do would be to just play them your favorite song by the Temptations...

People movin' out 
People movin' in
Why, because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run, but you sho' can't hide
An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
Vote for me, and I'll set you free
Rap on brother, rap on

Oh my God, rap! That's it!!! It's brilliant! Use that three-and-a-half hour commute on the A train to compose original raps about how gentrification destroys diversity and culture, and drives out the working class and makes things too clean and Gyllenhaally You are a genius!

Specifically, you are a genius named Mark Naison, a white Park Slope rapper who waxes poetic about gentrification. This man ACTUALLY EXISTS! Professor Naison is very concerned that if The Bronx is Park-Slope-ified, people will end up "sitting in their apartments being waited on by their servants" (I know that sounds made up, but watch the video, because he actually said those words), and they won't be down on the street, where the real culture happens.

His raps seem a little bit thin on substance.  People are supposed to learn things from this? Aside from a sort of 'gentrification = bad', 'immigration = good', he doesn't have much to say.  And some of his raps seem a little...um...disconnected. Is he actually rapping a line about immigrants from Virginia?  Is Virginia still part of the U.S.? 

He does succeed on a few points, though.  He's managed to totally ruin the reputations of the beat-boxing students who accompany him on his YouTube videos.  He's managed to come up with the brilliant (and, you must admit, it is fucking genius) idea to rhyme "place" with "space."  And he's managed to secure himself a space in the pantheon of white rappers that have deigned to enrich African American culture: Vanilla Ice. K-Fed. The white guys who played for the Chicago Bears in 1985. And now...Mark Naison.

Here's the video.  The rapping starts at about 2:20.