White & Nerdy

"White & Nerdy"
Song

"White & Nerdy" is the second single from "Weird Al" Yankovic's album Straight Outta Lynwood, which was released on September 26, 2006. It is a parody of the song "Ridin'" by Chamillionaire and Krayzie Bone. The song is a lamentation by the subject over his inability to "roll with the gangstas" because he is "just too white and nerdy", and includes references to concepts stereotypically associated with nerds, such as editing Wikipedia, playing Dungeons & Dragons, being proficient in the use of Internet slang and computer science, being a fan of Star Trek and Monty Python, and proficiency in mathematics.

Chamillionaire himself put "White and Nerdy" on his official MySpace page, and commented that he enjoys the parody. In an interview, he also stated he was pleasantly surprised by Weird Al's rapping abilities, praising them by saying "He's actually rapping pretty good on it, it's crazy [...] I didn't know he could rap like that."

The single was leaked onto the Internet on August 27, 2006, almost one month before the record's release date. It is currently streaming on Chamillionaire's MySpace page and Yankovic's own MySpace page.

The song has become Yankovic's first career Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, its peak being at #9 and besting his previous #12 peak for 1984's "Eat It", as well as his first Top 40 single since 1992's "Smells Like Nirvana". It debuted on the Hot Digital Songs chart at #10. It also has reached #2 at the U.S. iTunes Store, and peaked at #1 on VH1's top 20 video countdown.

Video

The single has an accompanying music video, which was recorded in high-definition video. The video was unique in that Yankovic personally recruited extras to participate in its filming. A request was posted via the blog on his MySpace page, and he received interest from a number of extras who were willing to work for free.

The video was leaked onto YouTube on September 17, 2006 just one day before the video was planned to be officially released at 9 PM Pacific time at AOL.com. Due to the leak, the premiere was cancelled, and AOL silently slipped the video onto their website hours before the premiere was set to take place. VH1 started airing the video in "large rotation" on September 20, 2006, it and debuted at #5 on their Top 20 countdown. It is currently available to watch on Yankovic's MySpace page, as well as on several other video hosting sites.

The video is also in rotation on MTV Hits.

A trivia quiz can be found on his song's website.

References in video

• The two automobiles appearing in the video are a (modified) 1967 Chevy Impala Convertible and a 2004 or 2005 Toyota Prius NHW20. The 1967 Impala has the License plate "OG 4LIFE"; the Prius has a California clean-air vehicle HOV Lane access sticker.

• When Al refers to himself making a homepage for his dog, he is lampooning the slang usage of "after" or "dawg", which is slang for a friend.

• Yankovic refers to M. C. Escher as being his "favorite MC". M. C. Escher is famous for his geometrically impossible illustrations and amazing repeating patterns.

• The reference to drinking Earl Grey tea as an alternative to the "gangsta's 40" refers to the preferred beverage of Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

• The questions on the Trivial Pursuit card in the video are as follows:

• (Geography) In what city is the largest ball of twine built by one man? (Also referenced in Yankovic's song "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota"; answer: Darwin, Minnesota)
• (Entertainment) What's the deal with Lindsay Lohan? I mean, seriously?
• (History) F.D.R.—Was he faking it?
• (Arts & Literature) On what page does Harry Potter die in the next book? (Days before the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a meme that mentioned the death of a prominent character from the book and the page on which it occurred in the U.S. publication had spread across the Internet; this question is likely based on this meme. J. K. Rowling has stated that a major character will die in the seventh book, and some fans believe that this very well could be Harry Potter himself.)
• (Science & Nature) What is the melting point of a gorilla's head?
• (Sports & Leisure) How many Wicket men are there on a 43-Man Squamish team? (Answer: 5)

File:WikiAl2.png

Al takes revenge on Atlantic Records

• The Wikipedia article Yankovic vandalizes (by typing "YOU SUCK" in big letters) is the article about Atlantic Records, referring to Yankovic's not receiving permission from the company to include "You're Pitiful", a parody of James Blunt's song "You're Beautiful", on Straight Outta Lynwood. Yankovic uses huge letters to make it clear to viewers what he is doing, although this is not actually possible in the current version of MediaWiki.

• Yankovic parodies the Star Wars Kid and is seen purchasing a bootleg version of The Star Wars Holiday Special toward the end of the video.

• A spray paint marking that is seen on the side of a dumpster near the end of the video has been claimed by some to be a Lambda and could possibly be a reference to the video game Half-Life (the logo for the game is an orange Lambda with a circle around it) or even the movie Revenge of the Nerds (the fraternity in the movie is Lambda Lambda Lambda). However both claims are disputed as it only slightly resembles a lambda, there is only one of them (the fraternity symbol would be three Lambdas in a row), and it does not conform very well to the Half-Life logo.

File:Pacman candles.jpg

Yankovic stands before a burning emblem of Pac-Man

• In the background where Yankovic is rapping on the street with the road flares, the road flares are in the shape of Pac-Man, parodying shots of the original song's video, which featured Chamillionaire rapping in front of a group of road flares forming the Chamillionaire logo.

• The equation in the background of the chorus is Schrödinger's wave equation for the hydrogen atom; however, there is an error in that Planck's constant is displayed in place of Dirac's constant.

Incorrect version as seen in the video

$\left[-{\frac {\mathbf {h} ^{2}}{2\mu }}\nabla ^{2}-{\frac {\mathbf {e} ^{2}}{\mathbf {r} }}\right]\psi \left(\mathbf {r} \right)=E\psi \left(\mathbf {r} \right).$

Correct version

$\left[-{\frac {\hbar ^{2}}{2\mu }}\nabla ^{2}-{\frac {\mathbf {e} ^{2}}{\mathbf {r} }}\right]\psi \left(\mathbf {r} \right)=E\psi \left(\mathbf {r} \right).$

• Yankovic created his "pimped-out" MySpace page for the filming. "White & Nerdy"'s top eight MySpace friends are Bill Gates, Napoleon Dynamite, Mr. Peabody, Albert Einstein, Screech, Frodo, Pee Wee Herman and Tom. At the bottom of the page, Larry Groznic — a fictional geek columnist for The Onion who wrote a lengthy diatribe about Yankovic's Wikipedia entry — begs to be part of the "top 8". His profile is Yankovic's creation.

• While Yankovic is in the store browsing for X-Men comic books, he is wearing a shirt that reads "Carl Sagan is my homeboy". Carl Sagan was a notable astronomer and science popularizer, world-famous for his Cosmos: A Personal Voyage television series.

• In the video, Yankovic's dog, Foofie, is an English Springer Spaniel.

• The scene with him playing Minesweeper (a game included with the Microsoft Windows operating system dating back to version 3.1) is actually being played on a Macintosh. The logged in user is listed as "whitenerdy". The reason that the Finder is the currently active application listed in the menu bar is because Minesweeper is running as a Dashboard widget. He is incorrectly shown as using the keyboard to play this mouse-controlled game.

• According to the cover of the yearbook, he was in high school in 1985. In reality, Yankovic graduated from Lynwood High School in 1976.

File:WeirdAl-WhiteAndNerdy001.jpg

When Yankovic raps that he's "fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon," the cover of a popular O'Reilly JavaScript book and Klingon seal are displayed in the background

• Yankovic points to the cover of O'Reilly Media's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide (ISBN 0596101996), a popular Javascript text, as his rap brags of fluency in the subject.

• At the end of the video, Al flashes the Vulcan salute in place of a gang sign.

• There are two versions of the video; the televised version shows a closeup of Al in front of a Gap store but on the original Internet-released version Al is shown further away, with a Gap sign visible behind him. The original version of the video contains the Wikipedia logo in the scene where Yankovic is editing a Wikipedia article; on the televised version this logo has been removed.

• When Al mentions the fact he knows pi to a thousand places, the digits visible in the background are all correct.

• When Al raps that he has "... pens in my pocket I must protect 'em", he implies that a pocket protector is meant to protect pens, which is incorrect; it is to protect your shirt pockets from ink stains.

• When in his library Al is reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Cameos

• Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key of MADtv appear in the blue 1967 Chevy Impala Convertible at the beginning of the video.

• Seth Green appears in the scene with a wall of action figures. Green has a huge personal collection of action figures (including Star Wars) that are stored in a large storage unit he shares with Hugh Sterbakov [1]. An episode from the second season of Green's show Robot Chicken contains a video created for another Straight Outta Lynwood song, "Weasel Stomping Day".

• Donny Osmond dances next to Yankovic in the scenes against the white background with the non-relativistic Schrödinger wave equation for hydrogen behind them.

• Judy Tenuta appears as the woman who receives a power strip as a Christmas present. Tenuta is also a comedian who emphasizes a small (concertina-sized) accordion in her act, was a regular on The Weird Al Show, and has also appeared in Yankovic's video for Headline News.

Extras

• Jon Katz, Michael Bueno, Tom Schuler, Peter Withers, John Reynolds, Jennifer More, Christina Rodriguez, Benjamin Baker, Jason Van Kemseke, George Garcia, Deb Anderson, Christina Malesci, Shawn Avery, Max Gillman, Mikel Browning, Diego Kontarousky, David Stephens and Jack Devries.[2]

• IGN blogger 'Ottsel' is featured twice in the video: once playing Dungeons and Dragons at the beginning and at the end playing ten-pin bowling [3].

Fan-made Video

Yankovic announced on his website that he is teaming up with YAHOO! Music to make a fans-only video for White & Nerdy. The deadline for submissions to Yahoo! was October 26, 2006.

See also

• List of singles by "Weird Al" Yankovic
• List of songs by "Weird Al" Yankovic
• It's All About The Pentiums - a similar song by Weird Al

External links

• Weird Al's home page
• Weird Al's MySpace page
• Chamillionaire's MySpace page
• Windows Media Streaming Video for White & Nerdy
• The MySpace page that Al points to in the video
• Official e-card for the song, includes quiz and video
• Lyrics for "White & Nerdy"
• Music Video on YouTube