While some people love to look up lyrics to new sons on Genius, others are perhaps a little less tech savvy. Fortunately, Jimmy Kimmel has a solution: A segment on his show called “New Lyrics For Old People.” It’s kind of a delight — Jimmy brings rapper with a recent single out and has them recite the lyrics from new songs, while Jimmy cuts in every so often to elaborate on a particular point or explain a vernacular term to his “slang-challenged” viewers. It’s a funny dynamic and the latest edition ratchets up the goofball tension by utilizing an artist who couldn’t be any more different than Jimmy, YG, and his new song “Go Loko.”
Of course, enough of Jimmy’s translations are just a hair off the mark that the whole enterprise becomes so hilarious that even YG himself has to crack up laughing at inaccuracy, even with Jimmy’s jokes ruffle his feathers a bit. However, when the translations are on point, they’re pretty hysterical, such as Jimmy’s conversion of YG’s “fo’ fo'”-laden hook into plain English, explaining that “my crazy girlfriend will take up arms against my enemies.” The cap on the whole thing is that YG looks very possibly drunk — like, “three sheets to the wind” drunk — and appears to be having the time of his life.
This could be a very fun regular segment for Jimmy — or Genius — because even when rappers explain their own lyrics, they often do so with just as much slang as they use in the song. Having a plainspoken translator could not only be funny but informative.
