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"Hell Naw To Da Naw Naw " Bishop Bullwinkle #14 The New Generation
DBN Update 10/16/21 This paragraph was originally posted on Daddy B. Nice's Corner.
October 15, 2021: Around Southern Soul Nation.... NEWS & NOTES: Your Daddy B. Nice talked with Bigg Robb about the Bishop Bullwinkle situation. In this month's Top 100 Countdown New Generation chart featuring Bishop Bullwinkle at #13, I appeal to Bigg Robb to let stand a YouTube page I found featuring the original "Hell Naw To The Naw Naw" with the Bigg Robb instrumental track still intact. After the copyright infringement crisis, most of the original pages were taken down, subsequently replaced by Bishop Bullwinkle With Da Bicycle, which currently has 65 million page views in spite of a much inferior instrumental track. I was expecting Robb to toe a hard line on the issue, but he graciously accepted my reasoning that with Bullwinkle gone it could only benefit southern soul and posterity to leave the original page online. You can read about it and listen to the overlooked video at Bishop Bullwinkle, New Generation.
(Read down...)
See the chart.
September 20, 2021: Daddy B. Nice's Profile
Listen to Bishop Bullwinkle singing "Hell 2 Da Naw Naw" on YouTube.
A month ago, if anyone had asked me if I had ever interviewed the late Bishop Bullwinkle (aka Bernard Thomas of Plant City, Florida), I would have said, "Hell Naw!" And I would have been wrong. Yes, it's true that I once turned down a phone call from Bishop Bullwinkle. In the midst of the furor over Bullwinkle's appropriation of the instrumental track from Bigg Robb's "Looking For A Country Girl," I wanted no part of listening to a one-sided tirade from the Bishop on how he was being unfairly treated.
But when I began researching my own exhaustive account of Bishop Bullwinkle in the DBN 21st Century Artist Guide to Bishop Bullinkle, I had to stand corrected. I discovered I had interviewed Bishop Bullwinkle, and it was just as I had anticipated, a one-sided, obscenity-laced tirade. The interview, along with everything else you ever wanted to know about Bishop Bullwinkle, is contained in that previous artist guide, and what I have done in this new profile of the late Bishop Bullwinkle is to summarize all the salient sections of that guide under titles and topics with hyper-links that will take the reader instantly to the exact point in the page of that sprawling document. (Below in the "About Artist"section.)
Meanwhile, in the interests of keeping it real (to which Bishop Bullwinkle would undoubtedly agree) I want to say Bullwinkle was not an especially nice guy. Driven, yes. Obsessed, yes. Inspired, oh yeah. Funny...hell yaw! A hint of malice....well, maybe. In other words, he was a human being like the rest of us, composed of strengths and flaws---in his case, oversized strengths and flaws.
Now you may ask...Well...Why is Bishop Bullwinkle relevant to the New Generation? After all, Bullwinkle was in his late sixties when he recorded "Hell 2 Da Naw Naw," and he passed away five years later (2019). Here, in a nutshell, is why.
The New Generation charts the most significant contributors to southern soul music in the period 2010-2030. If you could fly your own spacecraft up into the stratosphere and look down at the landscape of southern soul in this period, two peaks would stand out, Pokey Bear's "My Sidepiece" and Bishop Bullwinkle's "Hell Naw 2 Da Naw Naw". The primary YouTube pages of these two tunes each total some sixty million views, and along with other YouTube videos of each song---some still online, some taken down---the grand total for each is somewhere in the territory of a hundred million-plus views. These are staggering numbers for a southern soul recording, and as such they constitute the best evidence yet that southern soul music is 1/ growing in popularity and 2/ a harbinger of things to come in popular music. "Hell Naw To The Naw Naw" has become a part of the culture, and a common phrase that pops up in random conversation in every stratum of society, even if the source may be forgotten. Southern Soul has to take possession of that and celebrate that, which is what we are doing.
Bullwinkle brought a bracing whiff of reality to southern soul. He brought emotion---and even anger---to the genre. "Hell Naw" wasn't just another song in the southern soul tradition, with historical or latest-trend-type antecedents, themes or formulas. "Hell Naw" was completely outside the box. No one had ever heard anything like it.
When the song begins, what hits you first (if you can remember or re-imagine the first time you heard it) is the age in the singer's voice. This guy is old. The only other southern soul recording artist who evokes a similar reaction is R.T. ("It's A Mule") Taylor, the aged and marvelous but much less well-known singer brought to the recording studio by Jeter Jones and Ronald "Slack" Jefferson. By the time you're adjusting to the novelty of an old person (Bullwinkle) navigating the lead vocal, the rhythm track is thumping along and suddenly you realize...This old guy's rapping! And he is good! His lyrics are nothing less than astounding.
The Bigg Robb instrumental track responsible for the copyright controversy was never foremost in the success of "Hell 2 Da Naw Naw"; it was the passionate vocal and the unique content: the fiery sermon from the "Church Of Nothing But Da Truth". The song painted a slice of life that was woefully under-represented in popular culture: the inner workings of a small black church in the South, narrated by a rude and undiplomatic firebrand unconcerned with any societal repercussions or niceties.
If you've been patient enough to read this far, you're probably a Bishop Bullwinkle "Hell To The Naw Naw" fan in some degree, and for you I have a special treat: the original YouTube version of "Hell 2 Da Naw Naw". Mind you, "Hell 2 Da Naw Naw" was never released as a record, at least not in its heyday of 2014-16. It was a YouTube phenomenon, appreciated on a handful of YouTube pages, most of which were taken down for copyright infringement. But there is one that has been overlooked. It's still posted in a dusty corner of the the YouTube universe, overlooked by (among others) the sixty-four million people who have viewed Bishop Bullwinkle Hell To Da Naw, Naw, Naw With Da Bicycle with so much appreciation.
And yet, there is a profound difference between the original "Hell Naw 2 Da Naw Naw" and the remake (Bullwinkle with the bicycle). For example, one of the most blisteringly memorable of the original's stanzas went like this:
"I got kids dropping out of school,
Talking about they don't need to learn.
They standing on the corner rolling blunts,
Talking about, "Come on, let's burn."
They walking up and down the street,
Got their pants hanging down to their knees.
Talking about they looking for a job,
When I see them I say, "Nigga please!"
There is no "N-word" in the Bullwinkle On The Bicyle version, just a meek "please," and it is a significant omission. The song's edginess and impact, its familiarity with the "streets," even its rhythmic flow, is hindered and diluted.
But that's only the most egregious example. Then there's the replacement musical background for the infringed-upon Bigg Robb instrumental track from "Looking For A Country Girl". Although Bigg Robb's instrumental track was never the prime element in the success of "Hell To The Naw Naw," in retrospect it was far crisper than the soupy remix concocted for Bullwinkle on Da Bicycle.
Finally, I've listened to both versions countless times trying to decipher what makes Bullwinkle's vocal on the original so much more powerful than the vocal on the remake. In truth the two vocals are similar, and tens of millions of viewers and buyers of the belated mp3 have never known anything but the remake. Still, the original with the Bigg Robb instrumental track packs a ferocity, energy and intensity that the remake can't match. If the remake is almost identical, the ultimate difference may be the duration. The Bullwinkle On Da Bicycle version clocks in at four minutes, fifty seconds. The original version clocks in at six and a half minutes. Maybe lopping off more than a minute and a half of lyrical content accounts for the disparity.
So why, you may ask, is your Daddy B. Nice still procrastinating about posting the link? Can it be because I'm dreading what will happen if I do? Namely, if I post a link to the video, it most assuredly will be taken down for copyright infringement, resulting in the one and only existing remnant of the true---the original---"Hell 2 Da Naw Naw" becoming lost forever. And when fans in the future write me, pleading with me to send them a copy of the original "Hell Naw To The Naw Naw" in the same way fans of Lady J write me a half-dozen times a year begging for copies of "Same Old Bullshit," I will have to say no to them too: that it's out of print, taken down from YouTube and I can't disseminate it.
So I make a public appeal in advance to Bigg Robb to let this last-surviving, historical relic of "Hell Naw" stand. And I say to Bigg Robb...You know I was with you through the copyright imbroglio. I was with you then but this is now. Bishop Bullwinkle is gone and cannot benefit. This is a YouTube video, not a retail single. You know it can't do you any harm. Just the opposite. Attention will actually accrue to you as insiders learn your part in the evolution of this song and cultural phenomenon. Permit the video to stand. Let me memorialize this YouTube video by making it the official YouTube link from my site. Given the overwhelming search engine dominance of the "Bullwinkle With Da Bicycle" page, the only likely visitors to this forgotten YouTube page will be viewers funneled through the Daddy B. Nice Bishop Bullwinkle artist guide, meaning educated and serious fans eager to experience the real thing and learn Bigg Robb's part in it.
Okay. One last caveat for the readers. I've been using the term "original" loosely. There was at least one previously-posted YouTube video of "Hell To Da Naw Naw"---the true "original"---filmed under a tent in a Mobile, Alabama outdoor shopping mall (although the details are getting a little fuzzy) with a boombox as part of a WDLT-Mobile radio promotion. In fact, the WDLT video is what started the whole thing. It's what motivated Bullwinkle to put a fuller version on YouTube (the original posted at the end of this paragraph). It's how Bullwinkle got into copyright trouble in the first place. He thought he was just playing an instrumental track on a boombox while he rapped and sermonized for a few onlookers, never imagining the song would morph into the cause célèbre it became and catapult him into the nasty thickets of the music business. Reminds me of a guy who worked for me for forty years, with whom I had a "falling out" because what he called "borrowing" was what I called "stealing".
Listen to Bishop Bullwinkle singing the original version of "Hell Naw To the Naw Naw" on YouTube.
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To automatically link to Bishop Bullwinkle's charted radio singles, awards, CD's and other citations on the website, go to Bishop Bullwinkle in Daddy B. Nice's Comprehensive Index.
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Note: Bishop Bullwinkle also appears on Daddy B. Nice's Top 100 21st Century Southern Soul Countdown (2000-2020).
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--Daddy B. Nice
About Bishop Bullwinkle #14 The New Generation
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Bishop Bullwinkle and "Hell 2 Da Naw Naw," with links to the previous Daddy B. Nice Artist Guide where they are discussed. Click the desired links.
Bishop Bullwinkle: Gone But Not Forgotten (September 1, 2019: A Belated Obituary)
Bishop Bullwinkle's "Hell Naw To The Naw Naw": The Early Days...
Bigg Robb, when asked by your Daddy B. Nice about Bishop Bullwinkle...
In an interview with Daddy B Nice Bishop Bullwinkle Responds to Copyright Infringement Accusations With Anger And Defiance…
Daddy B. Nice on Plagiarism, Copyright Law, Copyright Infringement, Bigg Robb & Bishop Bullwinkle
Best Mid-Tempo Song 2017: "I Can't Be Faithful" by Pokey Bear & Bishop Bullwinkle
.Bishop Bullwinkle's New "No Woman, No Cry" Single
New Album Alert! The Davinci Code (Bullwinkle’s One & Only Album)
Honorary "B" Side
"I Can't Be Faithful (w/ Pokey Bear)"
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Hell Naw To Da Naw Naw
CD: Hell To Da Naw Naw Naw - Single
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I Can't Be Faithful (w/ Pokey Bear)
CD: Bear Season
Label: Ross Music Group
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Beast Of Burden
CD: The Davinci Code
Label: Music Access
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No Woman, No Cry
CD: The Davinci Code
Label: Music Access
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Do You Hear Me Now
CD: The Davinci Code
Label: Music Access
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Pouring Water
CD: The Davinci Code
Label: Music Access
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Some Preachers
CD: The Davinci Code
Label: Music Access
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