What am I missing?

As far as rap being multicultural, you seem to be aiming that at those of us speculating that this might be unintentionally racist, as if we don’t know. I am a casual fan of rap, especially older rap, and trust me, this is not something that has escaped me even with my only research being Wikipedia and documentaries on VH1. The thing is, rap has always been HEAVILY associated with black people, no matter who else is participating. Whether or not white people are participating, ‘black music’ has ALWAYS gotten unfair backlash, dating way before rap. It’s common for people (mostly white teenagers) to say that they hate rap, but still be fans of the Beastie Boys and Eminem, and still think that nu-metal (which is heavily rap based but predominantly white) is awesome. Even nu-metal artists will bend over backwards not to be associated with the term rap, even though that is what they’re doing. People have been blaming rap for a misogynist society since it’s inception, but barely acknowledge the misogyny in virtually every other music genre (PARTICULARLY white-dominated rock and alternative music, though with a brief exception for certain subgenres of metal). Ditto for violence. The same was true for blues (devil music!), rock-n-roll, and jazz when they were black-dominated and coming into the mainstream eye. It’s worth mentioning that R&B, another black dominated genre, is often grouped in with rap and even mistaken for rap despite them not being even remotely similar (yes, some rap artists also sing in R&B style, but when people say ‘no, I don’t like Usher I am not a fan of rap’ it’s telling). All of this? Means that mocking rap for the sake of mocking rap is something to be, at least, looked at with suspicion.

The rap part, however, if shown by itself without the rest of the video around it, would be a parody of the original./

AHHH that’s what was weird about it. I focused on the men themselves and their clothes and hadn’t really considered the lyrics. You’re totally right, it would have “fit” more properly if they’d had lyrics about how great going to church is rather than about orange cars.

Ultimately though, the CCC version is not a parody at all. The video as a whole is more of a tribute version, faithful to the original with changes to make it their own.

The rap part, however, if shown by itself without the rest of the video around it, would be a parody of the original.

And that, I think, is where the problem is.

The debate would probably be about whether this ‘divergence’ (As someone up top wrote) was on purpose, and just accidentally a bit racist, or whether it was created in all honesty and was just racist. Or was it not racist at all? I think it’d be neat to find out the story behind it.

So, I would ask the question: Is this evidence of ingrained racism by white people towards ethnic cultural phenomenons? Is this that much different than a white sorority girl dressed up in a skanky Native American costume?

I’m going to go with more along the lines of being out of touch than anything else. Early rap videos were that ridiculous, and it doesn’t surprise me that the chief leaders making the parody have no clue things have changed. It reminds me more of the stereotype of eastern Europeans wearing 80’s style clothing because the shows available are that out of sync, or a middle aged man trying an failing to use current slang.