Forget running for president or having a show on Broadway–Mormonism’s next big moment is here: BYU athlete Jimmer Fredette has been featured in Lil Wayne’s newest song in the following lyric:
“I got a chopper in the trimmer, shootin’ like Jimmer.”
This website helpfully translates:
Lil Wayne is describing his “chopper” — which is a gun for those that aren’t fluent in hip-hop — by saying it shoots like Jimmer
I think we should do our part to foster more positive press and public awareness of Mormons by encouraging more Mormon-theme lyrics to be included in popular songs. Jimmer has the advantage of being easy to rhyme, but I think we could come up with many other helpful 1- or 2-line suggestions for vocal artists to adopt.
Hip hop:
My cred takes a hit,
like lettin’-dogs-out Mitt
Dance:
I say hello!
Shake your body like a mold of green jell-o
Country-western:
You done me wrong, you got no alibi;
I’m accusin’ you; you’re like Noah, I’m Abinidi
Pop love song:
And IIIIIIIIIIIII will always love yooooooouuuuuu
Like those marriage-proposing kids at BYUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
I encourage our readers to contribute to this fledgling missionary outreach program by submitting your Mormon-theme lyrics for various genres. Once will build up a database of these, it will provide a valuable service to artists in times of writer’s block, and it will raise Mormons’ public profile: Win-win, as Stephen Covey would say!
Update: This comment from Sistas in Zion is pretty much the best thing ever.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
Bought me some pepper spray which saves me from bears
Just like my magic underwears
sorry, the previous is definitely an up-tempo honky-tonk offering
Bryan, do you know how to tell the difference between black bear and grizzly bear poop? Black bear poop contains nuts and berries. Grizzly bear poop contains little bells and smells like pepper.
Don’t forget the “Provo Girls,” song to the tune of “California Gurls.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W3EKMuWyps
After Rihanna:
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But Sunday School excites me.
Baby why so much talkin?
U make me bored like Gospel Doctrine?
Not so much a lyric as a visual shout-out, but don’t forget Brother Osmond showing up in “White and Nerdy” a few years back.
(RE: White & Nerdy – Watch for him starting at 1:22)
Let there be light,
Or at least a church-basketball fight.
I thought there already were LDS lyrics in pop music, like I’ve always heard Crosby, Stills & Nash in “Southern Cross” sing,
“I have been around the world,
Lookin’ for that Mormon girl,
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will.”
like the paintings of Jon Mcnaughton
those we dislike aren’t simply forgot’n
instead we’ll villify and revile
our subtext exposes their file.
Arogon/Jesus he’s a comin’
we know we be the ones he’ll be lovin’
Upon our Rameumptons we’ll pile
Knowing we’re better makes us smile.
@5: Ummmm….hey now….
Yo yo, we like ta bark at da moon,
cus’ with Tommy we got da reign of Monsooooooon…
There are so many possibilities here. How about a chaste, Mormon pop-diva straight out of Provo? She could call herself Lady Nah-Nah.
And in this life increase our station
We’ll raise a just and righteous nation
And it’s all thanks to correlation
And it’s all thanks to correlation
-ation -ation eh eh eh
Thanks to correlation
-ation -ation eh eh eh
“And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There flies an angel we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How every page came from the gold
And if we listen very hard
The Truth will come to us at last
When Zion is one and Zion is all
To be a rock that’s on its roll . . .
And we’re climbing a stairway to heaven.”
Sorry to be stuck in the 70’s but I find that very inspirational.
With apologies to Garth Brooks:
I’ve got friends in Mo’ places
16:
Ooooh, and it makes you wonder.
Indeed, it does.
Lil Wayne is late in the game. Back in the day Master P rapped: “Early in the mornin, squeezy show me, Straight to the temple, like two Mormons.”
Eminem said: “Go to war with the Mormons, take a bath with the Catholics.”
All these whack ryhmes ya’ll spittin they ain’t necessary
Sistas droppin knowledge just like the missionaries
What would you do if you could hie to Kolob
The next Mormon rapper shouldn’t quit his day job
Lil Wayne ain’t doin nothin to take us mainstream
We already there, the LDS dream team
Ya’ll come and join us where the church is true
The waters real warm, and the book is blue
Please don’t think that the Sistas is hatin
Can we get a Amen, cause we just participatin
PS: Our boy SiD dropped the real Provo Girl track right before he headed out on the mish.
We out! (Close your eyes and imagine us droppin the mic.)
AMEN!
(With huge apologies to Bob Seger)
Done Classic Rock or Metal style (Seger or Metallica–your choice).
On the wet and windy high roads
Of West Germany
You can hear the boys a-pedalin’
Their missionary pleas
You’re thinking about the girlfriend
And family left overseas.
But your thoughts will soon be wanderin’
The way they always do
When you’re tracting thirteen hours
And there’s not much else to do
And you don’t feel much like tractin’
You just wish the day was through.
Here I am, Mormon missionary
There I go, giving my all
Here I am, in West Germany
There I go…standing tall.
Well you walk onto the city streets
Strung out from your load
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you’re shaking from the cold
You pretend it doesn’t bother you
But you just want to explode.
Sometimes you can’t hear them talk
Other times you can
All the same old cliches,
“Are they JWs or some scam”
And you always feel outnumbered
But you’re a brave young man.
Here I am, Mormon missionary
There I go, giving my all
Here I am, in West Germany
There I go…standing tall.
Out there preaching repentance
Full of faith and full of hope
To the German masses
Who refuse to follow Pope
I feel the powers gathering,
But the people won’t take note.
Later in the evening as I say my late night prayers
Begging for catastrophe or two wild mean she-bears
I hear the church bells ringing, ringing loud and clear.
Here I am, on the streets again
There I go, rapping on doors
Here I am, giving all I got
There I go…serve the Lord.
Oh here I am, Mormon missionary
There I go, giving my all
Here I am in West Germany
There I go…standing tall.
Sistas F.T.EPIC.W.
Dylan’s “Sign on the Window” (New Morning album; 1970):
“Built me a cabin in Utah / Marry me a wife, catch a rainbow trout / Have a bunch of kids who call me pa / That must be what it’s all about.”
According to one music-cum-social commentator, “The location of the ‘cabin in Utah’ has been a point of sometimes violent debate among Dylan scholars. One camp contends that said cabin is on the Provo, close to Salt Lake, the center of Mormonism; they reason that Dylan shows an affinity for the faith (the narrator’s desire to ‘have a bunch of kids’). Others feel the fishery in question is the Green, simply because the fishing is generally better.”
http://chrissantella.net/golf/fly-fishing/966/dylan-the-fly-fishing-years
God is great
the church is true
but memebers are crazy
A district leader I had 30 years ago came up with this one:
Missionaries ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold
They’d rather send you a letter than diamonds or gold
Long rides on bicycles and old wrinkled white shirts
And each day begins before light
If he don’t get transferred, if he don’t go home
He’ll prob’ly just tract all day.
Mammas, please let your babies grow up to be missionaries
Don’t let ’em pick guitars and drive them old trucks.
Let ’em read scriptures and Talmage and such.
Mammas, please let your babies grow up to be missionaries
‘Cause they’re never alone, and they’re always with someone they love
…or something like that. There was more to it, but that’s about all I remember.
#19 – Speechless. In awe.
Whenever the word “moment” appears in the lyric seems a good chance to insert “Mormon”:
Power ballad–Whitney: “Just give me one Mormon in time!”
Country–Shania: “From this Mormon life has begun. From this Mormon you are the one.”
Adult contemporary–“Precious and few are the Mormons we two can share.”
Dinosaur Rock–Kansas: “I close my eyes only for a Mormon and the Mormons gone.”
Electronic–Art of Noise’s instrumental: “Mormons in Love”
Rap–Eminem’s “Sing for the Mormon”
#19 FTW (for the whack-down)
Youuuuu aaaarrrrreeee soooooo spiritualllllllll…..
To meeeeeeeeeee.
I believe in miracales
Since you came along
You modest thing
(modest thing, yeah)
Gillian Welch gave us a nod in her latest album, too:
It was seven years on the burning shore
With gatling guns and paint,
Working the lowlands door-to-door
Like a Latter-day Saint.
(“The Way It Will Be,” The Harrow & the Harvest)
The thing I like best about this post is that Lil Wayne + Cynthia L. is now enshrined forever on the internetz.
I bow down to the awesomeness that is #19 from the Sistas.
Here’s the CLEAN version of the lil wayne song with the jimmer line:
Isn’t it wonderful when people use ***** so we won’t know what the original words mean – or so those words won’t go through our minds as originally spelled and pronounced? ‘Cause when I see b****, I always think “bread”. So, while the song itself might be the “clean version”, the picture in #33 certainly isn’t.
(Is that too much like a cop, MCQ? – insert obligatory smiley)