roheblius's Full Review: World Wrestling Federation: The Music, Vol. 5
Once again, I give you another edition of The Good, The Bad, The The Celmatic.
This was one of the last music releases under the old WWF name and it was released in 2001. According to Wikipedia, just this year, it went platinum. I can't imagine it's still out on the shelves, considering the now WWE can't technically sell any merchandise under the old WWF name. But that's what it says.
The selling point of this album was that in addition to finally releasing theme music of wrestlers like Triple H, Chris Benoit, Tazz (6 years is a lot in this business), and Kurt Angle, The Rock would perform on a song titled Pie. Back during this time, The Rock would do a skit where he'd claim to like several different types of "pie". He'd talk about enjoying the likes of apple pie, sweet potato pie and everyone's favorite, "poontang pie". Yes, he really said this. And yes, he did it with a straight face. In fact, sometime last year, I took my children to Marie Calendars for lunch and asked them if they wanted some pie for dessert and my youngest requested everyone's favorite, "poontang pie". True story. Since The Rock had been singing in his promos for several years, it only made sense that they release a song featuring him doing actual singing right? Well, it might've made sense at the time, but sometimes ideas should be left on the cutting room floor.
But before we talk about that horrid excuse for the song, let's get into the other releases.
The Good
There are actually many good themes on this release, making it one of the better WWF/WWE music releases. Motorhead's The Game with the scratchy lead lyric. "It's time to play the gaaaaaaammmmmmmeeeeee," and the scary laugh afterwards is one of the greatest actual wrestling theme songs ever. Motorhead and the WWE seemingly work well together. Because Triple H loves Lemmy so (and loves to look like him), Motorhead is always going to have stuff to do with the WWE. In Royal Rumble 2000, Kurt Angle was scheduled to face a mystery opponent. That opponent turned out to be ECW's own Tazz. It was a great way to bring him into WWE (though soon Vince McMahon wanted to show everyone that Tazz was always too small and not really that tough and jobbed him soon after). His theme If You Dare is a good one.
The late Eddie Guerrero was good at just about everything he did. He'd walk out to the ring like a cocky hot tempered guy to the sounds of Latino Heat bobbing his head up and down with a s**t eating grin plastered on his face. It was the perfect theme song for his character with "Latino Heat!" being chanted in the chorus. Kurt Angle's Medal was actually used for masked wrestler, the Patriot, when he was in the then WWF in 1997. But can you see Angle coming out to anything different? When he comes out today in TNA, it's just not the same. Chris Benoit's Shooter might be the greatest theme music match for a wrestler ever. You have to be a bad dude to walk out simply to heavy electric guitar. Our Lady Peace actually improved on it when recording Whatever which was on WWE's Forceable Entry album.
The Bad
Rowdy was K-Kwik's theme song. The interesting thing about this song is that it's actually him rapping on it. And while he sounds like he has marbles in his mouth, he also very much sounds like old Master P crony Mystikal. Even though he references Timmy and Lassie (yes the dog) and Janglang (Bernie Mac's gay character from Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence's movie Life) you can't really understand what he's saying so it really doesn't matter. He wasn't the first rapper/wrestler the WWE tried to promote (remember Men On A Mission?) and he won't be the last even though they've dropped the rapping gimmick from John Cena's character. But let's just say this didn't really work. The Road Dogg was actually featured on this song initially as he and Kwik were on a team together, but then he didn't pass a medicine test and he was dropped. It Just Feels Right is Lita's entrance music and it fit her character very well. She was this grungy girl with tattoos who was also attractive and could do flying moves in the ring. But it wasn't as affective because it was a little too slow compared to the music that her counterparts, the Hardyz came out to.
Kane's Out Of Fire is classic, but how many times do they have to redo it? Chyna's Who I Am starts off with someone chanting, "Don't treat me like a woman," and since Chyna is supposedly a woman, shouldn't we stop taking the song seriously there? But no, it continues. "Don't treat me like a man, don't treat me like you know me, just treat me for who and what I am." Um, ok. You are a woman who takes copious amounts of steroids and you want to be treated for who you are? I know, I know, ogres have layers. Scotty Too Hotty's Turn It Up was basically a second version of he and Grandmaster Sexay's original Too Cool theme song, which was better than this. Unfortunately for Grandmaster, he was soon fired for trying to bring medicine over the border and thus, Scotty was a single. Not as good as the original.
The Celmatic
Billy Gunn has been through many a gimmick. The only one that ever worked was when he was Bad A** Billy Gunn, a part of DX with the Road Dogg as the New Age Outlaws. Ok, let me take that back. I loved him as Billy when he was a part of the gay duo, Billy and Chucky. He was Rockabilly, one of the Smoking Guns, Mr. A**, Kip James and the horrible "The 1" Billy Gunn. During his run as "The 1", he used this theme song called I've Got It All and if you took cheesy 80's music with cheesy saxaphone play and used it to introduce a wrestler whose gimmick was that he could jump high and he liked to flash his naked rear end to the fans, you'd have this. Raven used What About Me and the only cool thing about it was that it actually had a crow squawking. That's it. If not for the crow, this music wouldn't have even made sense.
At the end of 1999, Stone Cold Steve Austin was hurt and couldn't wrestle. Because he was the number one guy, the WWE still advertised him as appearing at their Survivor Series PPV knowing that he was out. He had a bad neck and was going to need surgery and would be out for a year. Early on in the show, they had him get hit by a car to explain his absence. Nearly a year later, Commissioner Mick Foley (yeah!) performed an investigation to find out who hit Stone Cold. It turned out that fan favorite Rikishi was the culprit. Rikishi wasn't even with the company back then, but to explain it, he was supposedly hanging out with Too Cool backstage at the show. And not only that, he supposedly did it for The Rock because he wanted The Rock to be the top dog. He and The Rock are loosely related in real life. They decided that in order for Rikishi to be this bad guy, he needed bad guy theme music. In order to do this, they created this brooding song called Bad Man. I'm not sure if it's actually Rikishi on the vocals or not, but it's just very boring and crickets inducing. Horrible choice for theme music for a bad guy who didn't really get over as a bad guy.
And finally, the magnum opus of this release. Featuring Slick Rick and The Rock together, Pie, it's simply a long running joke about The Rock's search for pie. Now think about this. The Rock uses the word "aroused" in the first line and finds a girl to rap to. The girl is voiced by Slick Rick. Can you imagine Slick Rick doing the voice of a girl and not even changing his regular voice? Ok, yes I can too. And then The Rock decides to pretend to rap in Chinese. And finally, Slick Rick understands that The Rock is searching for a girl to go to third base with. I'm sure that right after Children's Story, Slick Rick lists this as the second greatest moment of his career. At least he could've pretended to be Mona Lisa.
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