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Amy Winehouse Raps About Being Jewish

And smoking bacon

by
Ari M. Brostoff
September 30, 2009

Many of the good people of the internet are trashing Amy Winehouse’s rapping abilities, as demonstrated on a YouTube video of her jamming with some mates. But we respectfully disagree. This is punk rock, guys—it’s not a Grammy-winning performance, but it’s contagiously ecstatic (especially if you can deal with a little banshee-like shrieking). More saliently, it includes the following flow from Ms. Winehouse: “Oh, snap, I never knew, I never knew that, well, I’m a Jew/Well a Jew makin’/Anyway, if you can smoke bacon/Then I reckon that, um…”—at which point she changes the subject to the drumming prowess of her friend Zalon. If we’re following the logic correctly, what should fill in the lacuna at the end of that line is that, if you can smoke bacon, you can smoke crack. And if you’re a Jew who smokes bacon—really, what can’t you smoke?

Amy Winehouse Rapping: How Many Seconds Can You Stand Before You Press Stop? [Entertainment Weekly]

Ari M. Brostoff is Culture Editor at Jewish Currents.