On the road trip from Santa Cruz to the University of California Radio Network (UCRN) conference, the KZSC crew and I had the chance to stop at some great record stores along the way. Pretty much everything I wanted was out of my post-college price range, so rather than listen to some new obscurities I had a lot of downtime to meditate on some old ones.
Some one-offs, like last week’s Freddy’s Greatest Hits, have a poorly thought out but otherwise understandable place. But, like musical U.F.O.s, some things sort of fly into and out of your life with nothing explained. It is on this strange plot of obscurity that we find a crass, hypersexual 12” single, Deez Knuts. If you thought that the “Deez Nutz” joke was relatively new, you stand corrected: rap group Da Knut Sak provides physical evidence that the joke is at least two decades old.
Produced and spat forth in 1992 by A-Love and K-Max (I have no idea which is the DJ and which is the MC, as the liner notes only credit them with being “da lef knut” and “ da right knut” respectively), this single is a tribute to its creator’s own genitalia, and the subsequent four remixes elaborate on this point. There’s also the inexplicable inclusion of a radio edit, which I’m almost completely sure would not meet FCC guidelines on obscenity even without swearing.
But, if I’m writing about it, it surely must secretly be some great masterwork, right? Ha, no. No, this is pretty awful. It’s easily in the bottom three of worst things I’ve found while scouring the KZSC library. This weak link, rather than winding up in the purge bin or at our yearly CD and record sale, survives on the shelves by the grace of its sheer awfulness. Like the film The Room or a pug dog so inbred that it’s close to suffocating in its own neck meats, some things are made endearing simply because of the odds that had to be beaten for them to have existed. On the other hand, the record label that released it, presumably a creation of Da Knut Sak as Deez Knuts is their only release, is called Bein’ Lil Kids. Either this mystery just got a whole lot more meta, or a whole lot more creepy. If nothing else, we have comedy shows that can make excellent use of it.
(The conference was great by the way. It was lovely meeting you, Jennifer!)
