The looming threat of terror. The onward march of a shitstorm of global environmental crises. The prospect of jagged, pointy asteroids handing us the same fate as the dinosaurs. The world isn’t in the greatest of shapes in 2016, and, with all this mind, it’s rather easy to scare ourselves into a quaking, shivering wreck over any or all of the above.
But, in the face of all this impending adversity we find glimmers of hope for our continued existence in some of the finest facets of the enduring human spirit: happiness, joy, laughter. And we draw special courage from revelling in what is perhaps the greatest linguistic invention of all time: puns.
Yesterday, the worlds of Harlem hip-hop and north-eastern handymen – the likeliest of bedfellows, we know – collided spectacularly to produce what is surely one of history’s finest puns. As broken exclusively by Noisey yesterday, there is a man from Newcastle who has called his Handyman and Property Services business ‘ASAP Ricky’ and emblazoned it on his van. It’s as tremendous as it sounds.
ASAP Ricky is actually Carl Richard – Ricky being short for Richard – who picked up the tremendous name, he told Noisey, after someone “proposed it to me because of rap, like gangster rap and all that.” Unfortunately, Ricky isn’t too clued up on the A$AP Mob – he doesn’t name his favourite member of the crew or which Wavy Wednesday release he’s fucked with the most, as “he’s more into sort of indie music, but I do like rap, and stuff like that. Like I have a few albums” – but he did reveal that his favourite rap song is ‘Staring Through My Rearview’ by Tupac. Strong choice, Ricky.
We’re still waiting on the self-styled Pretty Motherfucker to reach out to his Tyneside namesake, but if Rocky loves puns as much as we do here in Britain, then it’s surely only a small matter of time before their debut collaborative mixtape drops. Ricky could even help out with some DIY around Rocky’s mansion during the recording sessions, too – it’s a win-win scenario.