‘Rick and Morty’s Love of Hip Hop Is More Than Just Another Joke

It’s fitting that the ever-unpredictable Rick and Morty is a show that constantly defies expectations. Expecting a silly story about Rick as a pickle? Nope. Instead, you get a shockingly deep examination of therapy. And no other detail showcases the perfect contradictions of this show better than its intense love of hip hop, and its more mainstream sibling, rap.

At its core Rick and Morty is structured to be a nerdy show. Originally developed as a raunchy take on Back to the Future, every episode is packed with nods to nerd culture, both obscure and mainstream. It’s equally possible to watch Rick go off on a rant about Minecraft, one of the most popular games of all time, as it is for him to freak out about Nintendo’s limited edition Zelda 3DS. This deep love of comic book lore, sci-fi deep cuts, and video game culture makes complete sense. With Community and Channel 101 Dan Harmon established himself as one of THE writers of nerd culture, a rare showrunner who doesn’t just understand this world but truly loves it. Similarly, co-showrunner Justin Roiland has expressed a deep passion from everything from VR, to collecting cereal boxes and, of course, discontinued McDonald’s sauces. You may never be able to trace where a Rick and Morty joke is going, but more often than not you can trace where it came from.

These eccentricities align with Rick and Morty’s specific grab bag of humor. Hip hop, a world society at large has dubbed as objectively cool, doesn’t. At least not until you start to think about it.

Rick and Morty’s love of hip hop started early. Season 1’s “Rick Potion #9” featured the iconic “Flu Hatin’ Rap,” a dumb song that sounded exactly like the raps Harmon used to make up for his podcast Harmontown. Later, the closer of “Something Ricked This Way Comes” featured Summer and Rick beating up various bullies all set to DMX’s “X Gon’ Give It to Ya.”

The show’s varied hip hop references have run the gamut from ridiculously silly, to pointedly aware. On the silly side there’s Ice T’s transformation into the Alphabetrium prince Water T in “Get Swifty.” And who can forget when the show started “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate” with Too $hort feat. Lil Jon and The EastSide Boyz’s “Shake That Monkey”? Then there are the deeper cuts, like when the rapper Logic actually appearing and performing a song about Noob-Noob in “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender.” Balthromaw the dragon’s cave of treasures in “Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty” follows that deeper cut pattern. One of his most coveted treasures was Future’s self-titled fifth album signed in molly and Percocet. That little throw away joke paid off in dividends once Rick and Balthromaw started hanging out in a montage set to — you guessed it — Future’s “Mask Off.”

But this love letter hasn’t been a one way relationship. Back in 2018 Run the Jewels released their music video for “Oh Mama”, an animated ode to both Rick and Morty and Pulp Fiction. Logic used the duo to announce his sixth mixtape, Bobby Tarantino II. The show has also been mentioned in YBN Nahmir’s “Rubbin Off the Paint” and Big Sean and Metro Boomin feat. Travis Scott’s “Go Lengend.”

Then there’s Kanye West.

When it was announced that Rick and Morty had been renewed for 70 new episodes, the singer-songwriter and fashion designer tweeted that it was his “favorite show” and that he had seen every episode “at least 5 times each.” Soon after the tweet, Harmon and Roiland offered to collaborate with West on a future episode, and the rapper actually went into the animation studio to explore what a Kanye-made Rick and Morty episode may look like. We still don’t know if this episode is actually going to happen because of time constraints and legal hurdles. But the fact it even moved forward at all is pretty freaking cool.

As you parse through this loving relationship between a weird cartoon and one of the most influential modern musical genres, it starts to make more sense. Rick and Morty has always been more than just stoner fuel. It’s a show about one brilliant man who believes he’s better than the rest of the world, and who shamelessly takes the multiverse for a ride. It’s about screaming “Look at me!” into the heartless void of the universe and daring the universe to look back. It’s about a mad scientist who knows he’s going to eventually fail, who knows that one day his luck’s going to run out and he’s going to have to pay for the enemies he’s made and the mistakes he’s made, but for now he’s going to live his life to the fullest, most grandiose extent because he has nothing and everything left. Rick and Morty is a show about making yourself into someone that matters in a universe that tells you: you don’t.

That’s hip hop. Desperation hiding behind ego, screaming to be remembered in a world that forgets too quickly, approaching life like you have one final make-it-or-break-it shot — all of that speaks to the undercurrent of this musical genre. It also speaks to a side of humanity we all feel and fear, but so many of us are too scared to admit.

Rick and Morty’s love of hip hop never feels like a gimmick, because it’s never been a gimmick. Superficially, the show may be a homage to nerd culture. But at its core? When it comes down to it, Rick and Morty is hip hop for life.

Where to stream Rick and Morty