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Slate: The Chronicles of Narnia Rap

"If you haven't seen Saturday Night Live's Chronicles of Narnia rap, then you don't have any friends. Or at least any friends with Internet access. The two-minute video, which debuted on SNL last Saturday before resurfacing as a much-forwarded "digital short," has accomplished what seemed impossible a week ago�making Saturday Night Live a cultural touchstone for the first time since Christopher Walken pleaded for "more cowbell." The popularity of the Narnia rap might augur a reawakening at SNL�in fact, there are already T-shirts that parrot the song's catchphrases. It's more significant, though, for what it says about the state of rap."

"People aren't forwarding this video because it's a parody of what's bad about rap; they're sending it around because it's an ode to what can be great about it. Instead of auguring a new day for SNL, maybe it points up what's missing in mainstream rap�an awareness that it's OK to be goofy."

The New York Times Nerds in the Hood, Stars on the Web
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"It is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace - or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills - that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, "Lazy Sunday" has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com; it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at NBC.com and the iTunes Music Store; and it has even inspired a line of T-shirts, available at Teetastic.com."

The Village Voice SNL Narnia-Rap Skit: Better Than Actual Rap?
"Given all this constant, epic failure, a digital video where two white cast-members rap about eating cupcakes and going to see Narnia should be a horrendous idea, the epitome of haha-we're-white irony-mining and blackfaced-up wiggity-wiggity posing, like the rapping Santa I saw at Walgreen's this weekend (he raps over "Getting Jiggy With It").

But there's nothing insulting or racist about "Lazy Sunday," the short in question. For one thing, and this is remarkable, "Lazy Sunday" is a pretty good rap song."

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Slate: The Chronicles of Narnia Rap

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