Grant Kirkhope composed the scores for some of the most well-known video games ever, including GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie. But his greatest contribution to culture is rhyming “dudes” with “mood” — and he’s OK with that. Kirkhope penned the lyrics to the Donkey Kong 64 intro song “DK Rap,” which Seth Rogen, who voices Donkey Kong in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, called “objectively one of the worst rap songs of all-time.”
In response, Kirkland tweeted, “If you’d told me in ‘97, when I wrote the worst rap track in the history of rap tracks, that it would go on to be in a Mario Bros movie I’d would’ve burst with excitement! Long live the DK Rap!”
Let’s give it up for Kirkland for resisting the “my name is [BLANK] and I’m here to say” cliché. Although now I want to know what Lanky Kong is here to say…
If you’d told me in ‘97, when I wrote the worst rap track in the history of rap tracks, that it would go on to be in a Mario Bros movie I’d would’ve burst with excitement! Long live the DK Rap! @Sethrogen https://t.co/CtrTr2eb8Z
— Grant Kirkhope (@grantkirkhope) March 30, 2023
Rogen discussed his opposite of method acting approach to voicing DK in the Mario movie (let Jeremy Strong voice Diddy Kong). “I was very clear, I don’t do voices,” he told Comic Book. “And if you want me to be in this movie, it’s gonna sound like me and that’s it. And that was the beginning and end of that conversation.” He is the leader of the bunch, after all.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie opens on April 5.