Dozens, literally dozens, of intrepid YouTube viewers have beheld the super-underground skills of Trippin Troy. Most of those viewers probably have dismissed the D.C. rapper’s home-rolled videos. But the haters are somewhat misguided. Trippin Troy might not be the most talented MC on the planet. He might not be the prettiest, the smartest, the most charismatic, or the most culturally sensitive. But Trippin Troy just might be the thriftiest MC who has ever rhymed into a video camera.

Exhibit A: “DC Freestyle”
Troy heads to the city line to tout his New Balance sneakers and Boost Mobile phone.

Exhibit B: “She using no Hands!”
Troy does not hire a lady for the video. He hangs up a picture from a magazine. Then he paws at the picture.

Exhibit C: “20 bubble butt girls”
Troy uses pictures again. He saves his dollars for the strip club itself.

Exhibit D: “A.I.D.S. they call it”
Troy hand-draws his teaching materials … and pockets the condom for later.

Trippin Troy also hates on Bin Laden and Lil Wayne, one for killing lots of innocent people and the other for kissing a dude. Neither Bin Laden or Lil Wayne is likely to record a diss track about Trippin Troy.

Maybe y’all know The Apes: The drums are vaguely Bonzo-ish; the keyboards are of the “agitated pipe organ” variety; and the bass is all baritone-y, in the same way that GVSB and the Jesus Lizard did it (except GVSB needed two bassists to get there, and the Jesus Lizard was more about “spectacle” than “bass,” anyway).

But back to The Apes: The D.C. band has signed to a D.C. label (Gypsy Eyes), it has a new singer (Breck Brunson), and it’s due to release its fourth album, Ghost Games, on Feb. 19. For now, we got a mad-funky MP3 and a snowy-happy video:

Download: “Beat of the Double” (mp3)

Watch: “Dr. Watcher”

Rank the following:

Jesus
The Scorpions
MC 900 Ft. Jesus
The 8-foot scorpion

Daydream Nation cover, duh:

The default image that appears on your Last.fm profile if you don’t upload your own picture:

(Or maybe it’s just a Gerhard Richter fan, clandestinely trying to reclaim the iconography from the tyrrany of the family Moore.)

If you hung around any die-hard hip-hop stoners in the mid-’90s, then you probably heard a good chunk of the Duck Down Records catalog. Those MCs — including Heltah Skeltah, Black Moon, Boot Camp Clik, etc. — proved to have longer shelf-lives than many of their hazy-headed contemporaries.

And now, according to a news release, they’re suckling at the Disney Co. teat: Some of ‘em have recorded songs that ESPN will use during its broadcasts of men’s college basketball this year. The list includes:

Buckshot of Black Moon, “All Business” (produced by Tai Dealz)
Tek of Smif N Wessun, “Get in the Game” (produced by KB)
Heltah Skeltah featuring Buckshot, “Getcha Team” (produced by Optiks)
Smif N Wessun, “Push It” (produced by Sic Beats)

(Insert your own hardass Dick Vitale rhyme here.)

Download: “Getcha Team” by Heltah Skeltah featuring Buckshot (MP3 via YouSendIt)

If you made the cut during this summer’s “American Idol” tryouts, and you’re preparing your game plan for Season 7 in January, keep this in mind: If you try to do Alicia Keys‘ “No One” during the competition, there’s a good chance that you will suck royally, unless you have amazing control. I’m no musical theorist, but my gut tells me that this melody is a bitch to sing, even for Keys. The video:

Her performance at the 2007 MTV VMAs:

I’ll let others decide whether Eddie Murphy’s “Party All The Time” is Advanced. (”It’s a hit song by a comedian who actually sings better when he’s imitating other people, blar-dee-blar-blar, blabba blabba.”)

I will note, however, that the song’s video is fantastic, but not because of the clothing, the hair, the lighting, the portly white guy with his sleeves pushed up, our own retro-actively ascribed meta-narratives about Murphy’s career, or even the shot at about 2:49 where Rick James looks like he’s either cupping a scrotum or elevating an imaginary heart during a ritual sacrifice. Nor is the video awesome because of what we now know about the relationship between James and Murphy brothers.

No, the video is singular because everybody in it — except maybe for James himself and the hair-metal dude on guitar — is TOTALLY AFRAID to be in the room with Eddie Murphy. You can see it: Oh shit, Rick is so high he actualy LIKES these vocals. Murphy’s own trepidation is obvious, yet different: These dudes would be too scared to tell me if I had a booger on my face. He’s lonely.

Nowadays, the extras in hip-hop and R&B videos act like they’re totally supposed to be there, even if they just happened to stumble upon the shoot. (I suppose people in R. Kelly videos are fearful in one way or another, but it’s also possible that they are also motivated by a strangely elegant form of pity.)

Eleanor Holmes Norton has scheduled a town hall meeting Saturday on HIV and AIDS awareness among teenagers. “What we found in our other town halls is that the most important way to drive out this disease is to bring it out in open conversation,” she told the Examiner.

Here’s a sense of why it’s an uphill battle: On Epiphany, the latest album from T-Pain, there’s a phone-conversation skit (”I Got It”) between the singer/rapper and a presumably fictitious girlfriend. She says she has HIV; he initially seems confused, but he closes out the conversation by saying, “I mean, we just gotta do what we gotta do. You know what, I love you, and we just gon’ make it work.” (The song immediately afterward, “Suicide,” looks at the psychology more grimly.)

Now, T-Pain made it clear in an interview with the Associated Press that his intention was to raise awareness about the disease: “A lot of people don’t think I got songs like that. … I hit on a lot of different subjects.”

But what does he get in response? At least five entries in Yahoo Answers — and numerous posts on message boards — that ask whether he actually has HIV/AIDS or not. Sigh. The questions prove at least one thing, though: Even if people can’t figure out that album skits are dramatizations, they at least have a sense that HIV/AIDS = bad for you.

For now, T-Pain seems to have more immediate problems.

Still sobbing like a child over last night’s overtime loss? Well, gentle Wizards fans, you need a cheap diversion—something other than that borfy Agent Zero commercial. We recommend schlepping over to Amazon and experiencing the audio clips for  Washington Wizards: Greatest Hits Vol. 1. The disc even has some Bullets nostalgia, but it’s best to listen to those tracks only if you have an insatiable appetite for Brent Musberger.

The playlist, including a cover of “Celebration” so generic it doesn’t even have the “artist” listed:

1. Backs to the Wall - Game #6 1978 NBA Finals vs. Sonics
2. Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are) [LP Version] - Ol’ Dirty Bastard
3. Washington Bullets 1978 NBA World Champions
4. I Really Like It - Harlem World
5. Celebration
6. I Like It (Like That) [Edit] - Ray Barretto
7. Juwan Howard Takes Over
8. Oye Como Va - Santana
9. Rocket Rod Strickland
10. One Love - Bob Marley & the Wailers
11. Blocked by Bol - Manute Bol Sets Franchise Record With 15 Rejections
12. Get Ready for This
13. To Catch a Thief - Michael Adams Franchise Record 9 Steals
14. Walk This Way - Aerosmith
15. Legler Beats the Buzzer
16. Pull Up to the Bumper
17. Rock - Mitch Raymond
18. Rock and Roll, Pt. 2 - Alphabet City All-Stars

Other teams apparently had their own hits pacakges, too.

Patton Oswalt offered the only substantive bit of political comedy last night at the Black Cat: It’s pointless to riff on George W. Bush and his remaining die-hard supporters, he said, because they have no more credibility than Creed fans. The crowd at the sold-out venue did not seem interested, thank the Lord, in consuming much more Washington humor than that.

Now that I think about it, this version of the Comedians of Comedy show also was rather thin on music bits, too. I mean, yeah, Brian Posehn (pictured) talks about metal-as-concept a lot, and he did do an extended routine about the phrase “party like a rock star.” (Those who still use it without irony, he said, should have to denote which rock star they mean, e.g. Marilyn Manson drinking absinthe and tucking his pee-pee between his legs, or Eddie Van Halen removing his teeth, chugging booze, and reacting in horror to his own Gollum-like image in the mirror.) Posehn also deemed that it’s OK for one heterosexual male to blow another heterosexual male, as long as the blower says SLAYER! during the act.

Side note: Speaking of Creed … the Stapp-free aftermath band, Alter Bridge, is surprisingly better-than-shitty. (All things being relative, of course.)