Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go

           One of my earliest memories of music is listening to "Ninja Rap" by Vanilla Ice, from the soundtrack of the 1991 movie "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze". I'm not entirely sure why this song stood out to me so distinctly, but if I had to guess, it's probably because it's the goofiest thing that's ever been committed to film. At the climax of the movie, the ninja turtles end up in a night club where rapper Vanilla Ice is performing. They end up fighting a bunch of evil ninjas on the dance floor while Vanilla Ice performs a song about the ninja turtles. Once all of the bad guys are defeated, the ninja turtles go up on stage and start dancing with Vanilla Ice and his posse, at which point The Shredder emerges from backstage and threatens to destroy them all. To verify that I didn't just imagine this, I looked up this clip on YouTube and it happened exactly like how I imagined it. 
          The only lines from the song that I remembered were "Go ninja, go ninja, go. Go ninja, go ninja, go. Go ninja, go ninja, go. Go ninja, go ninja, go" and I figured that this was some random line that for some reason imprinted on my young mind. Upon relistening to the song, I now realize that the reason those lines were all I remembered is because they're pretty much half of the song's lyrics. The song has 3 short verses and 4 repetitions of the chorus. The chorus goes, 
Ninja, Ninja, RAP! Ninja, Ninja, RAP! GO GO GO GO!
Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO: Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!
Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO: Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!
GO GO GO GO!
Each repetition of the chorus is around 40 seconds long, so between the the four verses, the song spend 2:40 on the choruses. The song itself is only 3:40 long, so like 3/4 of the whole length is spent on a chorus that's composed of 3 distinct words.
        The verses themselves aren't actually that bad in the sense that for the most part Vanilla Ice sticks to the topic and competently rhymes words. I feel like that's all you can really ask of a song that's about man-sized turtles fighting in a a night club. It seems like towards the end of the second and third verses, Vanilla Ice sort of gives up on trying to rhyme. At a certain point, he rhymes the words "turtle" and "level" and at another point, he tries to rhyme "four" with "the". 
        You know how a lot of children like any music you play for them because they don't know any better. This was definitely the case with me. I thought this song was dope. I thought it was really cool how the ninja turtles were beating up evil ninjas to the beat of the song. I haven't actually heard the song in the last 10 years and going back to it, I wasn't totally sure what to expect. It wasn't as good as I remembered it being, but for a song for a children's movie that was probably written in like 20 minutes, I feel like it's about as good as it could be .

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