There’s Finally a Rotary Engine-Themed Rap Song and the Music Video Is Lit
Hertrech Eugene Jr. ended his legendary tenure at Hoonigan to found Nappy Boy Automotive with rap star T-Pain.
Car culture is moving forward, y’all. If it wasn’t Frank Ocean putting an orange E30 BMW M3 on the cover of his mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra in 2011, or Tyler, The Creator secretly putting his McLaren 675LT on the cover of Flower Boy, or Travis Scott putting an FD Mazda RX-7, a rally E30 M3, and an A80 Supra on the cover of JACKBOYS, or ASAP Rocky–OK, you get the idea. Car culture, specifically ‘90s tuner cars, has become mainstream culture. Adding to the proof is T-Pain and Hert’s new music video based on an audio sample of a rotary engine idling.
Yes, that’s right, Hertrech Eugene Jr. (formerly of Hoonigan) is making music with T-Pain. It’s a reality I didn’t anticipate, but I am totally at peace with it. The song is called Baby Got Brap, and it’s as hilarious and shockingly catchy as you would expect. The core sample of the song is a distorted rotary engine’s loping idle, often referred to as brap. But what’s cooler is how T-Pain and Hert integrate the tuner culture of today with cameos in the music video.
It’s an excellent ensemble cast of legendary builds, a few ratty RX-7s, and plenty of drift culture. Most will spot the Pennzoil-liveried FD RX-7 in the opening shots of the music video. That car is one of the most iconic in the North American RX-7 scene and was built by Jonny Grunwald using a TCP Magic body kit and a three-rotor 20B engine. T-Pain drives an incredibly clean FC RX-7 convertible with an LS swap. And, of course, Hert’s exalted turbo LS-swapped FC RX-7 he calls the Twerkstallion is featured heavily and it recently came back from the dead after being un-rotary swapped.
Hert even raps in the song and has a pretty decent verse, especially for somebody who has not done any music (as far as I know) until now. The music video also comes with an announcement of what Hert is doing after Hoonigan: Founding, co-owning, and becoming the president of Nappy Boy Automotive with T-Pain. The pair say that it’s going to be a drift and general motorsports team, and Hert is going to be leading the company.
Yeah, OK, Baby Got Brap probably isn’t the next club banger, but that isn’t the point, and it’s an incredibly fun cruising track that’s packed with car references. Most importantly, it does all of it for the culture.
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