Shakespearean Rap

Lately I’ve been looking into ChatGPT to see if I could use it to generate material for this blog. I’ve had some promising results that I would like to share with you. Here is “Drop It Like It’s Hot” written in the style of Shakespeare:

Oh fair maid, ’tis a tale I shall unfold,
Of a pimp with a flair and a heart bold,
With a Rollie on wrist and Chandon he pours,
He doth roll the finest of herbs, ne’er a chore.

And when the pigs with malice doth appear,
He parks his car with nimble speed and clear,
And if an attitude a man doth show,
He pops it like a firework aglow.

A noble lord he is, with a heart so kind,
And ice cubes and creams, a most bountiful mind,
A eligible bachelor, with a million dollar boat,
Whiter than the snow that doth chill and gloat.

A Phantom he drives, exterior like fish eggs,
And the interior like suicide-wrist red,
He shall exercise thee, and make thee see,
A lesson in life, this can be.

With a killer wit the beat and friends so fierce,
With steel that shall make thee shake and tear,
So fear not to approach, but think twice before,
Or thou shalt face the wrath of the Big Dog, Snoop.

And as a Bad Boy, with hoes aplenty,
He drives his own car, doth wear his own garments plenty,
A boss he is, and sharp of mind and heart,
On TV and magazines, a work of art.

So heed my words, and listen to this rhyme,
For it shall teach thee wisdom in its chime,
Of a pimp with a heart and a tale to tell,
Who drops it like its hot, and parks it as well.

I don’t know about you, but I find this stuff hilarious. You can try and rap this aloud, but you will notice the flow doesn’t quite work, but it works well enough that you can do it if you bend the rules of English pronunciation a little bit.

I also tried to get it to rap in the style of Charles Dickens. Unfortunately what I got wasn’t written in verse (which makes sense, Dickens didn’t write many verses), but instead a commentary written with the usual Dickens snark:

Alas, in a world where the pimps roam freely, it is oft advised that one drop all caution and defend oneself with ferocity. For when the constables of the law come to encroach upon thee, one must take refuge, and park themselves safely. But should a rogue individual dare to raise their voice in anger, one must be ready to silence them with a swift response.

In this world of decadence and vice, the narrator finds himself adorned with the finery of success. A Rolex adorns his wrist, and the finest of champagnes flows freely from his cup. He boasts of his wealth, his dreams, and the pleasures that come with his station in life.

And yet, he is a “gangsta,” a notorious outlaw who displays his colors for all to see. Though he may play the gentleman in society, his true nature shines through in his violent verse. He warns of his prowess with a gun, and his willingness to silence any who would dare cross him.

And yet, amidst all this talk of violence and intimidation, the narrator also invites others to join him in revelry. He calls upon the women to shed their modesty and dance to the music that he and his associates play.

It is a curious narrative, one of contradictions and complexities. But in the end, the refrain remains the same: “Drop it like it’s hot.” For in this dangerous world, one must always be ready to defend oneself.

The funny thing about my experiment was that ChatGPT does not like rap, and gangsta rap in particular. I get constant warnings that “this material may violate the terms of service”. Frankly I don’t think gangsta rap written in the style of Shakespearean sonnets will inspire people to commit violence, but this is a limitation of the technology.

I Published My First Book!

I’ve finally done it, I published my first book. It wasn’t easy, but then again it wasn’t hard either. I’ve always wanted to make my writing more than a hobby, and this was my first step. I decided to go on the self-publishing route,and it’s out on Amazon. It’s called A Bug on the Internet.

But as some of you who have published books before, writing it is the easy part, the hard part is promoting it. This is what I’ll be concentrating on for the rest of the year. But before I become a walking billboard, let me regale you with the story of how I came up with the idea for this novel and how I wrote it.

The year was 2019 and I was watching a BBC documentary entitled Metamorphosis: The Science of Change. Even though it was a science documentary, they kept bringing up Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. As I was reminded of the book, I thought to myself, “What if a guy got turned into a giant bug today, what would happen to him?” In Kafka’s novel, he got locked up in his room and died after his father attacked him, but in our day and age I thought we would be more enlightened and treat him better. You know, because everyone is trying to be politically correct nowadays, they would bend over backwards to try and not offend him (even though they inadvertently do end up offending him). But then I had an epiphany, the perfect career for someone who got turned into a giant bug is Internet celebrity. Over the years I discovered that the Internet love weird things, and a man turning into a giant bug is a kind of bizarreness that the Internet would go gaga over. And because of Rule 34, he would probably become a sex symbol as well. Within fifteen minutes of finishing the documentary, I realized that I had struck gold, I probably will never come up with a better idea for a novel, ever.

The first 20,000 words of the novel was the easiest thing to write, ever. The words just streamed out of my fingers and onto the keyboard, I barely had to think about it because the plot was just so obvious that they almost wrote themselves. But then things got a lot harder. I ran out of all the obvious jokes that I could make, and I had to put in some more thoughtful ideas into the story. It didn’t help that there were a lot more things going in my life at that point, my dad just got dementia, I got a lot more work from my boss, and COVID happened. I just didn’t have the mental energy to continue writing the story.

I did end up writing about 50,000 words for the story, but even then it was nowhere near finished. But in the middle of 2022 I decided that I was going to publish it anyway, and I put a deadline of Christmas for me to finish the novel. I figured that Christmas was the time people make a lot of purchases, and they would be more willing to buy my book if I got it ready for the holiday season. Of course, I ended up making a lot of compromise in order to finish it before Christmas. One thing I did was to cut the already paltry 50,000 words by half, so the book doesn’t have a proper ending but cuts off mid-stream, resulting in a cliffhanger. But I figured that was good enough, it will function as a sequel hook when I inevitably write a sequel. Also, I didn’t fully edit the book, so when it went up on Amazon on December 21, so it was full of grammatical issues. I didn’t fix those issues until late January. So yes, I did make my deadline, but it didn’t have the effect I intended.

Still, I stand by my decisions because otherwise it would have been likely that this novel would have never been published. I would have just dragged my feet and found some excuse not to continue working on it. In a way, publishing this is more for me than anything else. It’s a way to hold my feet to the fire and create a reason for me to continue working on this novel, since people will now want to see the sequel and how the story ends.

So if you are interested in the weird and wacky adventures of Gregory Samsa, Internet celebrity, you can get it on Amazon. Just click on the link.

P. S. I’m running a promotion, anyone who goes on Amazon between Feb. 3 and Feb 7, you can get a free copy of it on Kindle. If you prefer your books in the form of dead trees, you can get a copy for $4.99.