Baba Brinkman - Beowulf lyrics

Yo, listen up, I wanna say some things About the days of ancient Danish kings One of the first was a foundling Who flourished called Shield Shaefing Whose great grandson Hrothgar Was in charge of the Danes when this tale is told The tale of a mead hall harrowed By a terror, and a hero called Beowulf A ma**ive mead hall – Heorot Hrothgar had it built And after he filled it with dancing and drinking And laughter and singing, happy people Yeah, but that was brief though There was a monster prowling on the moors Grendel, and for him the sound Of carousing was just an obnoxious roar Now Grendel's been called a fiend Cursed by God, a powerful demon Yeah, lots of awful things And it's true that the works that he wrought were fiendish But these were superstitious folk And yes, I mean both the Christian poet And the old pagan text he re-wrote Grendel's flesh was physical Now I've heard some outlandish conjectures From critics about how: “Grendel's cannibalism Was essentially different from the psychopathic Pleasures of a man like Hannibal Lecter” One theory goes that he was the last Of a band of Neanderthal wretches Another says that he was an apparition The province of psychoan*lysis Yeah, rabid secularists like me Wanna cut to the heart of a story Maybe he had some deformity In his eardrums; now that would be parsimony It doesn't matter – you know as well As I do that there's no hell No gods, no demons, no elves Delivering gifts on Noel And I say “Oh well” C'mon, so what if Grendel's Nature wasn't clear-cut? All that matters here is the level Of fear that he brought to Heorot They say at night he snuck in Greedy and grim, and murdered thirty men! But even if it was just three men Would he be any less of a demon? Grendel left the Spear-Danes screamin' And they couldn't even deal him a cut He just k**ed when he wanted and spilled so much blood That it left a bit of a chill on their fun So they prayed to their pagan gods for relief If only they had Jesus! If only they knew what we know now How Jesus comes to your aid when he's needed! Forgive me for being facetious It's just that divine intervention Was just as non-existent then As now as a help in a time of oppression What happened instead was That word spread to the seven seas To the friends and enemies of the Danes That Hrothgar's hall stood empty And it spread to the Geats, to Sweden To the land of Beowulf And him and his men donned their chain-mail coats And sailed for the Danish coast And it wasn't long before they stood Sea-swept, and rain-soaked In Hrothgar's great mead hall And there Beowulf made his famous boast And said: “Anyone who's ever seen me fight Knows that I've never been the type to back down I've suffered extremes defending the Geats And I've never had a match ‘til now But I've heard there's a fiend in your land A demon who has no fear of reprisal Who creeps in the night, eats you alive And threatens your mere survival So here's my boast: I've heard it said That Grendel fights with no weapons So I'll go toe-to-toe with no sword in my hand And no shield by my side for protection Yeah, hand-to-hand combat! Just me and the fiend in a fight to the d**h And if Grendel wins, well then Best believe he'll be feeding tonight on my flesh!” Hwaet!?! Well, Hrothgrar was quite impressed With the strong words of this conqueror And he ordered a feast to be served to the Geats And the mead hall was soon full of drunkards But their comforts were soon disturbed By a servant of the king called Unferth A weaselly little flea who was eager to see Beowulf's pride get punctured “What vanity!” he cried to the crowd “This man lives in a fantasy If he thinks he can defeat Such a powerful enemy single-handedly! His accomplishments are nothing But narcissistic non-existent nonsense How can you defeat a monster when you even lost to Your friend Breca in a swimming contest?” Well, Beowulf wasn't nonplussed By this obnoxious onslaught, nah He said: “You's a flea, and I'm the big dawg I scratch you off my balls with my muthaf**in' paws Besides, b**h, your information is wrong I beat Breca and cut off the python Tentacles of every muthaf**in' leviathan That tried it on up in that quiet storm And anyway If you had any sk** Then Grendel couldn't k** all your men And still go back to his den at the end and chill!” Well, after that, Unferth Basically, he just shut the f** up Maybe because of Beowulf's Gratuitous use of the word “muthaf**a” Yeah, it's offensive language But come on, this is Anglo-Saxon You can't expect manners From men of action; nah, that's a plain distraction So after his word-clash with Unferth Beowulf went back to the feast And kept on bragging out loud About how he was gonna tackle the beast And then Hrothgar went to bed And he left the guard to Beowulf and the rest of the Geats And the fires burned low And the mead hall was soon fast asleep And that's when the shadow-stalker Grendel, came greedily loping Down from the mountain, and out of the mist ‘Cause he could smell fresh human meat for the gulping And the mead-hall was dozing Every single person in the place was unconscious Except for Beowulf Who lay awake in the darkness, waiting for the monster That hall was erected as a fortress But Grendel just smashed the doors in With his ma**ive hands, grabbed the first warrior In sight, and viciously slashed and gored him Mmm, the taste of his flesh was gorgeous And Grendel was ready for more, just Itching to turn the rest of these poor Wretches into a pile of dismembered corpses So he moved like a phantom Over to the next man's form on the floor But that's when he felt a strong hand Clamp on to his wrist and twist back his arm! Then Grendel felt a kind of pain That he never in his life had to contemplate Squeezed, like by an anaconda snake And only one thought in his mind: “Don't fight, run away!” But he was boa constricted Beowulf had him in a d**h-grip I mean, you know how much pain is inflicted Right? When your arm gets twisted? Well the intended victim was the predator now And the hall filled with the most pitiful sound This long, drawn-out, desperate howl Like: “Aaaaooooooowww!” And Geat warriors all surrounded Grendel With their swords drawn and tried to stab him But none of them could get a blow past him So they swore that his skin was enchanted But some form of spell-casting So that no physical weapon could scratch him But what do you think the chances are That they just chickened out and called it magic? I mean, it does sound like one of those embellishments Invented by storytellers just To make Beowulf's belligerence And bellicose rhetoric sound like prescience, right? Yeah, so his men were ineffective But Grendel's howls were blended Now with the sickening sound of ligaments Ripping out of position and twisting tendons Ow! Then his limb disconnected And Grendel ran back out into the mist And Beowulf raised the severed arm aloft Still held in his fist And the Geat warriors all gathered ‘round Eager to see the demon flesh And they all agreed that, yes Grendel was soon gonna bleed to d**h Then they mounted the arm as a trophy On the wall to inspire their fire-side boasting And troubadours immortalized Beowulf's heroic deeds in their poetry And I wish I could leave this scene With the Danes and Geats on easy street But heroes fight demons in threes So, introducing: Angelina Jolie As Grendel's mother, a feminine k**er With collagen lips and swollen breasts-s-s And when Beowulf tried to confront her All he really wanted was s**… God damn it, Robert Zemeckis! Your Hollywood epic with all of its Marketing methods is confounding My honest efforts to keep this poem authentic! It's pathetic! All I see when I picture Grendel's mother, instead of a hideous monster Is Crispin Glover caressing his digitally-rendered Mom like an incestuous lover And I'll never recover, so forget it! If you want to know her actual facial features Just go ask your twelfth-grade teachers Or your college professors – they're like the last gate-keepers On tradition – or read Seamus Heaney's version His verse is amazing! But any pop-culture interpretation Is subject to virtually unlimited changes ‘Cause if you try to please the Tourists Well, the Purists get Tourette's and curse you But then if you try to do the reverse Well, the Tourists are known for their lack of endurance So who do I try to please first? Myself, and it usually works! So instead of judging like jurists Just sit back and enjoy the experience And I'll go back to the story... actually You know what? Forget it – I'd rather just leave it If you really wanna know how it ends Well then I guess you'd better just read it! That's right Go read it Seamus Heaney Norton Publishing Get the dual language edition Read the introduction too Super informative C'mon ladies and gentleman You can't listen to rap music to get an education That's insane! This is entertainment only You have to go read! Go read! Go read! Go reeaaad!!!