Codeine is a fat cunt (album)
| Codeine is a fat cunt | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| Album by Sesame Street | ||
| Released Date | March 14, 1994 | |
| Recorded | January 5 - 19, 1994 | |
| Genre | Pop Rap | |
| Length | 90:67 | |
| Record label | Bananaphone | |
| Professional reviews | ||
| Oscar Wilde review | 4/5 - "This album opened my eyes and closed my veins!" | |
| Keith Richards review | 1/5 - "Out of all the fat cunts I've done in my life, I have to say codeine gave me the best experience. And trust me, I've done plenty of fat cunts." | |
Codeine is a fat cunt is a kiddie-pop album by the famous children's show Sesame Street. The album is often known by its owners as The CFC or Fat Cunt for short. All proceeds from sales of the album go to the Hoboerotic Charitable Organisation, TrampAid. It is championed as a pioneer release in overlooked genre of educational rap, and was largely ignored by the members of Talk Talk upon its release.
Origins
At the height of the War on Drugs in the early to mid '90s, the producers of Sesame Street were stuck between a rock and a bad place: teens between the ages of 13 and 17 were falling victim to drug addiction, and the show was losing ratings to other programs which addressed the pressing issue of teen addiction.
They needed an effective anti-drug bit that would appeal to a slightly older crowd, and after much consideration they went with a music album. Apparently the show was aimed at a younger audience, and executives needed music to "get in touch with teenagers and minorities".
Trustee and voice actor Emilio Delgado spoke on this subject:
| “ | We considered making a joint effort with the nice folks in the Dead Nigger Storage business in a bit for crack awareness, but all of our ideas were shot down in focus groups. It seemed attacks on crack were overdone after Bear in the Big Blue House died suddenly of an overdose. Heroin was already covered in one of 1992's more memorable segments ... 'blow blow blow blow (doo doo doo doo doo), black tar black tar (doo doo doo doo)' ... you remember that one, right? So naturally, we went with numero dos: codeine. | ” |
The Album
Codeine is a fat cunt primarily features the characters/muppets Grover, Elmo and the aptly named newcomer Woozy, who has a severe addiction to narcotics. Throughout most of the songs, Grover and Elmo berate her with a barrage of insults and put-downs, ranging from "needle shooting ugly freak" and the eponymous "blister popping fat cunt" to the more kid-friendly "poopy shooting tar stuffer".
The album was a hit with the teen audience, and would later become a cult classic on the internet with over five hundred thousand torrents downloaded worldwide. Oddly enough, the message carried through: codeine usage dropped by sixteen percent in the continental United States, and a multitude of codeine users were promptly ostracized.
The tracks
- Introduction - Spoken segment where Elmo and Grover encounter Woozy passed out in the street (1:19)
- Drugs are bad, especially Codeine (ft. Lou Reed) (4:10)
- Codeine is a fat cunt (3:12)
- Roses are red, you'll soon be dead (2:21)
- Elmo's Codeine Concentration Camp (don't shoot your shit in my oven, punk) (5:31)
- Sleepy time forever (7:13)
- Don't toss your needles in my can (ft. Oscar the Grouch) (3:17)
- Pants time forever (0:48)
- Morphine is kind of bad, too (One: Two, Five! -no, three sir- Three!)
- Codeine is a fat cunt (reprise) (1:48)
- Fuck you, Users of Codeine (0:09)
Grover does the majority of the rapping on the album, though on track seven Oscar the Grouch makes a cameo appearance as MC Canman, whereas track four is done entirely by Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz.