Gratuitous Rap

Spitting bars on the witness stand might just earn you a rap sheet.

"You know there's something you should know, so I'm gonna tell you so! Don't sweat it! Forget it! Enjoy the show!"

— Fritz, opening the "Party Time" number in Titanic: The Legend Goes On

Basically, things like characters performing brief rap numbers in stories where it isn't the primary subject.

Compare Piss-Take Rap and A Wild Rapper Appears!. Not to be confused with Gratuitous Rape.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• That one episode of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo with the roller coaster.
• DEVILMAN crybaby has a few scenes where a gang of delinquents does freestyle raps about current events or about society. Though the raps are rather good, given that the voice actors of the delinquents are real-life rappers.
• Gintama: Katsura and his "Katsurap." Even more gratuitous are the recaps for the Thorny Boys arc.
• All versions of the ending theme Marukaite Chikyuu of Hetalia: Axis Powers anime contain rap sections, even for characters like Japan whom you'll not expect to rap.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War has a chapter where Fujiwara suddenly busts into a rap number when she, Kaguya, and Shirogane are playing a "word guessing game". Shirogane thinks Fujiwara's lost her mind while Kaguya sits and smiles, hoping that her silent composure will help her win the game. They both lose.
• Killer B from Naruto has a tendency to do this, even when others say it's not all that good.

Films — Animation

• The ending for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water features a rap battle between Bubbles and a flock of seagulls, done by the guys at Epic Rap Battles of History.
• Titanic: The Legend Goes On. With the rapping dog. "It's party time!"
• And then there's the rapping shark in In Search of the Titanic, making there two full-length animated movies about the Titanic disaster featuring rapping animals.
• "Yo, the name is Batty! The logic is erratic! Potato in a jacket! Toys in the attic! I rock and I ramble! My brain is SCRAMBLED! Rap like an animal, but I'm a mammal!"
• Care Bears in Wonderland. The rapping cat.
• In Cars 3, Cruz Ramirez does a crazy workout routine complete with weird Latin music, which she makes up her own rap out of. Lightning McQueen later uses the melody and makes up his own rap when attempting to apologize to Cruz later on in the movie.

Films — Live-Action

• The masked slasher in Scary Movie dances around the room and dispenses some rapid-fire rap lyrics after the other characters invite him to smoke some marijuana. He even uses his knife to make "cool" rap gestures - but apparently gets a little too into it, because he ends up slashing everyone in the room to death.
• Epic Movie contains several scenes.
• Bulworth. A jaded politician decides to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the American public… in rap... Significantly Better Than It Sounds.
• Die, motherfucker, die, motherfucker, die! It works a little better here because the entire movie is set to hip-hop. Which is hilarious because it's about weedy white (and one Indian) office workers.
• The Hard Knock Life scene from the 3rd Austin Powers movie. Which also happened to be a parody of a rap by Jay-Z that sampled the soundtrack from Annie.
• The infamous "Ninja Rap" sequence in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. Perpetrated by the one and only Vanilla Ice.
• PIG POWER IN THE HOUSE!!!!
• The Villain Song in The Muppets (2011) is a deliberately over-the-top example.
• Cool Cat Saves the Kids has "Cool Cat Boogie", which even starts out with "My name is Cool Cat."
• M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit- a horror film no less- has several instances where Tyler raps, for no other reason than that he loves to rap.

Live-Action TV

• The Ringmaster in the Doctor Who serial "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy".
• Degrassi Junior High constantly. The worst was Rick's environmental rap.
• Champion ice skater Katerina Witt suddenly and bizarrely breaks into a full-on rap during one of the Christmas TV specials she made in the early '90s.
• Odd Squad:
  • "Is There a Doctor in the House?", Dr. O's theme song, is an example of this. It plays at the end of "Oscar of All Trades" and also serves as a Boastful Rap, as it's about Dr. O being an expert "in everything that you don't know".
  • "A Likely Story", the duet between Olympia and Otis in "The Cherry-on-Top-inator" as they tell their story of how the eponymous gadget helped them to Oona, has one that's smack-dab in the middle of the song as Otis, Olympia, and the chef at the restaurant they're disguised at try to figure out what the Puppy Master's favorite dish is.

Pinballs

• Each of the stiffs do this in Class of 1812 whenever they are dug up.

Theme Parks

• In the pre-show for Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon at Universal Studios, Jimmy has Tariq Trotter (vocalist of The Roots) rap the ride's safety instructions, feeling that just reciting them normally would be too boring.

Video Games

• Sonic Adventure:
  • "You can call me Knuckles... Unlike Sonic I don't chuckle!"
  • The second game continues the trend. "ECHIDONA! That's what I'm representin'! Never seen a mic hog spit like a menace!"
• Donkey Kong 64: "His coconut gun/Can fire in spurts/If he shoots ya/It's gonna hurt!"
• Marlon Rimes in the DLC case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies occasionally drops into this, even giving one testimony in rap!
• Seven Samurai 20XX has two bosses, the "Hip-hop Brothers" Mu and Chi, break into a lengthy rapping intro before facing the protagonist, and for once Natoe seems to channel the audience's WTF as they introduce themselves. They also speak in a rapping fashion after being beaten, but Natoe is still unimpressed.

Web Animation

• The cover version of "Splash Free" in 50% OFF adds a rap featuring Nagisa.

Webcomics

• Dinosaur Comics frequently breaks out into gratuitous rap, due to T-Rex's love of fresh rhymes. At one point, God busted it out to philosophically prove His existence.
• Homestuck, with GameBro, which doesn't seem to have any specific character performing it, but is a rap about an obscure plot element that resurfaces a negligible amount of times in the massive comic.
• Minion Comics features a Teddy Ruxpin-esque stuffed turtle singing a rap song entitled "Punch Your Bitch In The Mouth" advising schoolchildren about how to treat their girlfriends.

Web Original

• Commentary! The Musical, "Neil's Turn": in the middle of a song he suddenly starts rapping.
  I'll charm the chicks (Are those real? Ha!)
  Do magic tricks (Was it the three of spades? Ho!)
  Lay down some tap
  And I can rap
  My name is Neil and I'm here to say, [random rapping noises]
  No I can't rap
  That was painful...
• Final Fantasy VII Abridged: Rude communicates entirely through rapping.

Western Animation

• South Park:
  • The show gives us this little gem.
    Cartman: Well I'm a badass cowboy living in the cowboy days. A wiki wiki scratch yo yo jiggy jiggy. Me and Artemis Clyde frog from the big metal spider. A wiki wiki what.
  • The eponymous Public Service Announcement troupe at the beginning of "Butt Out".
• "It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown" features one. Yes, a rap in a Peanuts special.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Pranksta Rap," Homer and Marge perform an impromptu Piss-Take Rap (complete with Maggie pacifier-sucking to the beat) to explain to Bart he can't go to a rap concert. Bart just walks away, embarrassed.
  • Homer also proposed a rap to advertise his Mr. Plow business.
• The conclusion of an episode of Foster's saw Harriman make a rap video to promote the house on its "spider-web".
• Dexter's Laboratory features an episode where Dexter raps about the "reality" behind Santa Claus.
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!: "We're the Mario Brothers, and plumbin's our game! We're not like the others who get all the fame!"
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Testing, Testing, 1 2 3", Pinkie Pie tries to help Rainbow Dash learn about the history of the Wonderbolts by rapping about it. Complete with a '90s style Stylistic Suck video.
• Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School ends with Scrappy Doo rapping. It is exactly as horrendous as it sounds.
• Donkey Kong Country: "Hold it now, hold it now, hold it, hold it right there! You wouldn't drop, couldn't drop [Diddy], you wouldn't dare!"

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