Here’s the wonder that is Athens Boys Choir. The name is deceiving — ABC is actually a hip-hop group of one, and that one happens to be a mild-mannered boy named Katz who was born a girl.
I first heard of ABC when I received his CD — with possibly the most hilariously understated cover you can imagine — to review for B*tch Magazine. His lyrics tend toward the risque, although he’s frequently more playful than offensive (on his latest single, Fagette, he shouts out “girls with the chubby chubbs/and the boys who ain’t got no butts”)….but, the opposite of every hip-hop sensibility you’ve ever encountered, this is probably the tamest rap video ever.
It’s a composite of videos from Katz’s bat mitzvah.
Or, as the intro puts it: “In 2002 I came out as a man. But before I could do that, I had to become…a woman.”
Thence follows some of the trippiest ’80s retro Bar Mitzvah footage that the human brain can wrap itself around. It’s a one-man pitch for the next book in the Bar Mitzvah Disco series.
What I love most about it: how it’s so nice. And how even the requisite Jewish kitsch is sweet: “Now my bubby wanted a doctor to marry me/You got two Ph.D.’s/one in fine and one in sexy!”
