Das Racist

Overview

If you haven't heard of Das Racist, you need to stop what you're doing right now and go on YouTube. For a band that rose to fame with 'Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell', a song that I can't tell is genius or just really really annoying. One thing it is is hilarious, so we're lucky Das Racist are in the country so we can laugh along with them as they laugh at us with their witty cultural references and weed edge/hare krishna hard core/art rap/freak folk music.

It is easy to dismiss Das Racist as joke rap, but this trio from Brooklyn are actually legit. Their name comes from a popular internet meme (“That's racist!” - a little boy in the corner of a questionable photograph), just as I suspected. Their rap style has gained momentum since the group's inception in 2008, with Rolling Stone naming their album Relax one of the best of 2011.

As well as being talented music artists, they are all creative in other areas, hosting radio shows, comedy gigs, competing in cartoon-offs and writing retorts to nay-sayers. It's easy to just scratch the surface and look at Das Racist's songs as being hip hop fodder, but they are actually incredibly insightful and perceptive, making Das Racist the band not to miss when they hit our shores, both for the Big Day Out and their sideshows.