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Grant Kirkhope discusses the creation of the DK Rap
A portion of a Nintendo Nation interview with Grant Kirkhope...
NN – Let’s go right to the beginning, give us a brief background on the rap.
GK – Because at the start of the SNES Donkey Kong Country there was kind of an old version DK to the new version DK at the start of that game we wanted to do the same thing with DK64. It was George Andreas, who will be forever named for this, that wanted to do that. I think at the time it was that Run DMC/ Jason Nevins remix thing, ‘That’s the way it is’ or whatever it was called, that track, so that was in his head I think because he’s quite a fan of that music.
So I said ‘ok look, let’s try to do a DK Rap, that’d be quite funny.’ So he’d write the lyrics and I’d write the tune and backing stuff. I just got a drum loop going, fiddled with it a little bit, and him and Chris Sutherland were the rappers. The chorus was kind of a bevy’s beauties of Rare staff – I think it was Gregg Mayles, Steve Mayles, Ed Bryan and Chris Peil that did the ‘D K! Donkey Kong!’ Bit in the chorus. I just sat and recorded it all.
I thought it was hilarious at the time. Y’know, I thought it was hilarious that everytime a different DK character was mentioned in the verse every character had a different instrument. So Chunky had Timpanis because he was heavy, Diddy had an electric guitar verse because he played electric guitar, and the funny one, Lanky, had a Trombone and so on. So the idea was that when their verse came round their instrument would play in the background so to speak. And we thought that was hilarious, y’know, ‘ho ho ho, isn’t it funny’ etc.
But unfortunately when it finally came out everyone thought I was having a serious attempt at writing some kind of really great rap song, which unfortunately I wasn’t at the time! So my hilarious joke sort of backfired and didn’t go down very well at all.
But I have to say that it was so bizarre that Nintendo picked it up and used it in quite a few other games, and a very famous Japanese rapper remixed it really seriously!
Full interview here
NN – Let’s go right to the beginning, give us a brief background on the rap.
GK – Because at the start of the SNES Donkey Kong Country there was kind of an old version DK to the new version DK at the start of that game we wanted to do the same thing with DK64. It was George Andreas, who will be forever named for this, that wanted to do that. I think at the time it was that Run DMC/ Jason Nevins remix thing, ‘That’s the way it is’ or whatever it was called, that track, so that was in his head I think because he’s quite a fan of that music.
So I said ‘ok look, let’s try to do a DK Rap, that’d be quite funny.’ So he’d write the lyrics and I’d write the tune and backing stuff. I just got a drum loop going, fiddled with it a little bit, and him and Chris Sutherland were the rappers. The chorus was kind of a bevy’s beauties of Rare staff – I think it was Gregg Mayles, Steve Mayles, Ed Bryan and Chris Peil that did the ‘D K! Donkey Kong!’ Bit in the chorus. I just sat and recorded it all.
I thought it was hilarious at the time. Y’know, I thought it was hilarious that everytime a different DK character was mentioned in the verse every character had a different instrument. So Chunky had Timpanis because he was heavy, Diddy had an electric guitar verse because he played electric guitar, and the funny one, Lanky, had a Trombone and so on. So the idea was that when their verse came round their instrument would play in the background so to speak. And we thought that was hilarious, y’know, ‘ho ho ho, isn’t it funny’ etc.
But unfortunately when it finally came out everyone thought I was having a serious attempt at writing some kind of really great rap song, which unfortunately I wasn’t at the time! So my hilarious joke sort of backfired and didn’t go down very well at all.
But I have to say that it was so bizarre that Nintendo picked it up and used it in quite a few other games, and a very famous Japanese rapper remixed it really seriously!