aint i a stinker clip obama

“I’m the president of the United States!” President  aint i a stinker clip Obama yells, his face filled with excitement and indignation.

But that’s not exactly what he says; the sentence includes an expletive and a racial remark.

Of course, it’s not Mr. Obama himself, but an exceptionally convincing impersonator, James Davis, who plays Baracka Flacka Flames in the video “Head of the State.” (The video is accessible on YouTube and other websites.) The video, which has received over a million views since Thursday, is a parody of the boisterous “Hard in Da Paint,” a recent hit by the raucous Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame.

“I’m the president of the United States!”President Obama yells, his face filled with excitement and indignation.

But that’s not exactly what he says; the sentence includes an expletive and a racial remark.

Of course, it’s not Mr. Obama himself, but an exceptionally convincing impersonator, James Davis, who plays Baracka Flacka Flames in the video “Head of the State.” (The video is accessible on YouTube and other websites.) The video, which has received over a million views since Thursday, is a parody of the boisterous “Hard in Da Paint,” a recent hit by the raucous Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame.

On the one hand, it’s a hilarious and smart spoof, as comfortable with Mr. Obama’s tics as it is with hip-hop etiquette. The video was shot in front of an abandoned house in South Central Los Angeles and is reminiscent to Waka Flocka Flame’s original music video.

Furthermore, the filmmakers appear to acknowledge that racial prejudices continue to impact how some people view the first pair, and that many distinct stripes of blackness may be compacted into one concept.

Mr. Davis’ virtually pitch-perfect imitation of Mr. Obama takes the enterprise beyond the level of a dirty joke, a challenge that several more well-known comedians have faced (especially Fred Armisen, whose cool jazzbo Obama on “Saturday Night Live” is the polar antithesis of Mr. Davis’). Even in this distracting situation, the portrayal is precise and meticulously handled, from the brief, serious vocal interjections to the strong hand movements while speaking, clenched fist vertical, thumb pointing out at the audience.

“Like Obama, I grew up and got my education around a lot of white people,” Mr. Davis said in an interview. “I’m just naturally bad at a lot of pretending to be.” “I’m blessed that the one I’m good at is president.”

Mr. Davis is a stand-up comedian and writer for the BET network’s award programmes. Martin Usher, the video’s director and Mr. Davis’s partner at Live That Life Productions, is a mainly self-taught filmmaker who has worked on tiny behind-the-scenes roles on “Party Down” and “Defiance,” among other projects.

They made the “Head of the State” clip in the spirit of the Lonely Island musical skits on “Saturday Night Live,” albeit a spoof of this sort, with its heavy racist connotations, would be impossible in that setting.

Some of the original song’s lyrics were modified to be more controversial and particular to the president: for example, the gun threat “Front yard, broad day with the SK” became “”I’m not a member of the Secret Service, but I do have my own SK.” Others stayed untouched and were nevertheless extremely humorous in their own right: “Where have you gone? What’s the location of your trap? You’re not from the ghetto.”

Mr. Davis’s comedy relies on the fusion of cultures, such as Hollywood and South Central, the president and hip-hop, and so on. “A block away from Crenshaw,” he added, “not in the hood, but hood-adjacent.” He mentions “Chappelle’s Show” and parody films such as “Fear of a Black Hat” and “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” as influences.

Mr. Usher’s residence is across the street from the unoccupied house utilised in the filming. Mr. Davis and Mr. Usher met with local officials, which in this case did not include the police, to obtain permission to film on the block. “We received a hood pass and spoke with certain O.G.s,” Mr.. Davis explained, referring to original gangsters. “Sitting around with individuals I know gangbang, ‘American Gangster’-looking fellas was one of the most fascinating parts of this.” (The technique ended up mimicking Waka’s plan.)  Flocka Flame’s video, in which the rapper meets with Triple O.G. T. Rodgers, an early Bloods member turned gang interventionist.)

Mr. Davis explained that putting Mr. Obama in a hip-hop setting was not a stretch: “He’s a come-up story in the biggest way possible.” A lot of rap is about pushing hard and getting from nothing to something.”

Mr. Obama has become a hip-hop touchstone, sung about by Jay-Z and Young Jeezy, but he has also been tarred for his association with the genre. When Ludacris produced a song criticising Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain before the 2008 election, the Obama campaign went on the defence, criticising it. And when Mr. Obama revealed last month to Rolling Stone that he had Lil Wayne on his iPod, the conservative outcry was fast and predictable.

But it’s the concept of Mr. Obama as a fish out of water, letting go in a fantasy setting that makes “Head of State” so great. “Who is Obama when the White House doors are closed, and the cameras leave?” Mr. Davis inquired. “I’d be disappointed if Obama only listened to Luther Vandross and Frank Sinatra.” In between staff meetings, Obama wants some Lil Wayne. “I’d like to hear some bass in the White House.”

Mr. Davis’s interest and willingness to play fast and loose with the image of the president and the first lady, who has mostly been insulated to the kind of scrutiny that her husband faces, have not been shared by everyone. Mr. Davis went on “Inside Edition” last week and was grilled on whether the film was insulting to the president and might interfere with the midterm elections.

Waka Flocka Flame seemed to have conflicting feelings about the song. “That they used it to be so sarcastic, it was almost a form of disrespect,” he went on to say. He tweeted it to “let other people see how ignorant other people can be,” he said, not quite convincingly. His manager, Debra Antney (his mother), stated she tried unsuccessfully to get the footage deleted from the popular hip-hop video site WorldstarHipHop.com. “That’s not a positive image for us, period, as African-Americans, where we came from, where we’re going today,” she went on to say.

Mr. Davis, on the other hand, stated that he felt the clip’s humour helped transcend beyond fundamental binary concerning racial portrayal. “I can speak to the educated black guy and the hood black guy,” he went on to say. “The fact that we can come out and put on a full production like this in an area where there’s gang violence, in what people would consider the hood, is important to me.”

And he feels that if the president ever sees it, he will not be insulted. “I don’t know what it takes to get to Obama,” Mr. Davis said. “If the White House is like other businesses and offices, he’s probably aware of it.” Perhaps it’s on his to-do list: restore the economy, health care, and keep an eye on this link.”