Cyriaque Lamar
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History is an ocean of crap, and the Internet is a stinky maelstrom, dredging up derelict stupidity our forbearers scuttled decades earlier. So if you ever made something you wish nobody remembered -- say, a 1992 NBC drama about a dead child who is reincarnated as a robot dinosaur -- be aware there's a 100 percent chance the Internet will salvage that shit so hard that it gets its own maritime museum. And knowing such, it's strange the Internet has yet to celebrate McGruff's Smart Kids Album.
"If your friend tries to peer-pressure you into eating onions, just say no! You could die!"
There's a lot of propaganda out there about not putting angel dust or airplane glue or thumbtacks in your face holes -- what distinguishes McGruff's Smart Kids Album from the rest of the pack? Well, this sonic grenade in the war on drugs came out in the '80s, and holy fuck, can you tell. Dickhead fretting, elfin keyboard twinkles, and saxophones powerful enough to pop boners buoy McGruff's nicotine-stained croon. Yes, MCGRUFF SINGS, and he sounds like a human Tom Waits.
Below are the best tracks from the Smart Kids Album. I've left off two of the tracks, "I'm Glad I'm Me" and "Alcohol," the latter of which sees McGruff harmonize like the drunkest cop on the force. They're middling at best. The same cannot be said for the rest of the songs, which rank among the worst music ever recorded by a giant dog.
The first track we'll discuss today is "Cocaine and Crack," which is arguably the capstone of the Smart Kids Album. If crack and cocaine had a sitcom where they adopted a hard-luck orphan, this would be their theme song:
Crack would be lax on discipline but big on hugs.
Note that McGruff urges an unknown party to quit cocaine. It's exactly like "You're So Vain," but not about Warren Beatty masturbating into a cup of coffee or whatever. Anyway, McGruff's obviously not addressing a child, because any 7-year-old with a lemonade stand successful enough to support a full-blown coke habit would be too frightening to tolerate a lecture, let alone allow McGruff to walk away with his balls attached to his body. Judging from the below coloring book, the likeliest candidate of McGruff's beseeching is Sonny the bird, as we must assume McGruff misheard him say he was "coo-coo for coca puffs."
General Mills
"Cocoa puffs? Nice try, but chocolate's poison. You're all under arrest, except for Frankenberry -- I love him."
"Marijuana" is a paradox, and a gasp-inducing one at that. On one hand, this song is the aural opposite of marijuana. The guitar solo resembles a box of diseased tomcats. The rest of the song is likely an illegally sampled Casio demo. John Boehner would mistake this for reggae. On the other hand, this song is music's greatest gift to the oh-man-did-I-just-shit-myself stoned since "Hulkster in Heaven."
We assume this played in Maureen Dowd's head that one time she ate 16 servings of pot in one sitting.
Also, I only now realized that our younger or international readers may not know the history of McGruff the Crime Dog. In the late '70s, Madison Avenue admen created McGruff for a crime prevention nonprofit. This mascot was supposed to teach kids about the risks of drug abuse, but the idea of a bloodhound with human agency filled America's children with so much existential dread that the crack epidemic happened.
"Inhalants" is ostensibly a dance track. We should all write to our congressmen so federal law mandates that famous DJs like Giotto di Uhnz-Uhnz and DJ Glowstick Fuckface who headline EDM festivals like Electron Dicktwiddle Bacchanalia or Sapphire Enema Gala must immediately play "Inhalants" in full when the bass drops. After all, MDMA's been popular but a few decades, and your great-grandpappy was huffing saddle varnish and moose oil.
There's something wonderfully Kanye about rhyming "inhalants" with "inhalants" a dozen times over three minutes.
This is it. This is the song that sounds like having sex with McGruff the Crime Dog, which is probably like doing a geriatric werewolf who smells like Chesterfields and whose dirty talk consists of DEA stats about PCP arrests in Idaho. Seriously, if you got rid of the children's choir and swapped out McGruff with a female vocalist named "Tina P" or "Weena Z" and left the rest as is, this could pass for something Prince produced ... on a weekend .... while doing a crossword puzzle ... with a peacock feather.
McGruff never abstains from hot sax.
As a palate cleanser, let's contrast the production failings of the Smart Kids Album with 1971's Bill Cosby Talks to Kids About Drugs, which was 32 harrowing minutes of Cliff Huxtable shouting about heroin over free jazz. The album makes drugs sound fucking terrifying -- so mission accomplished there -- but it also makes Bill Cosby sound like the Angel of Death. That's not a complaint, mind you.
This suggestion comes to us from Cracked's very own Anita Serwacki, who notes that the following track, "Dope Pusher," is "one of the best songs in the world." She's right!
This is more disturbing than that time a bunch of inmates threatened to molest Fat Albert.
Cyriaque Lamar is a senior editor here at Cracked. His last article was a short story about a lewd automobile decal. He is on Twitter.
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