National Day in Singapore takes place every August. Last year the mint-candy company Mentos released a catchy rap video promoting “National Night,” as in “As a Singaporean citizen you’ll be doing your civic duty if you forget about the condoms after the fireworks and the parades are all overwith. So let’s get fucking, shall we?”
Daniel Lametti of Slate explains the magnitude of the problems Singapore is facing:
Singapore’s birth rate is at a record low. Female citizens of the country now give birth to about one child in their lifetime, a number that used to be much higher. (American women, by comparison, have about 2 children.) According to a video released by Singapore’s government, the city-state needs to produce about 50,000 children per year to maintain its population and avoid the economic calamity associated with an aging citizenry. But the current birth rate is less than 30,000 children per year. To combat the problem, last month the government sought ideas from the public; that’s when The Freshmaker popped in.
To my untrained ear, the song is mimicking the structure of Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s massive hit “Empire State of Mind,” and the video is clearly a cheeky copy of Cee-Lo’s massive hit “Fuck You.” Hey, why not stick with the best, right?
The thing is, though, this song is actually pretty good. It’s jam-packed with clever and salacious wordplay—“Let’s not watch fireworks, let’s make ‘em instead” or “Singapore’s population, it needs some increasin’ / So forget wavin’ flags, on August 9th we be freaking,” and so forth.
We’ll leave the last word to Lametti. After explaining that baby booms can’t be manufactured by PR appeals, he writes,
Given that the Mentos ad was not commissioned by the government ... it seems likely that the campaign is simply trying to capitalize on a national crisis rather than actually bolster baby-making. Even so, Singapore’s government doesn’t seem to mind; they’ve let the advertisement run uncensored in a country that once banned a Janet Jackson album for “sexually explicit” lyrics.
Well, I’ll be. Check out the video—it’s a lot of fun:
via Fluxtumblr
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
There are two sides to every story: Cee Lo Green’s ‘Fuck You’ from a woman’s perspective
A Speculative List of Jay-Z’s 99 Problems