Star Wars Gangsta Rap
You might remember it as Star Wars Gangsta Rap Special Edition
The archive has not found a surviving copy.
2000·Early web, before YouTube·funny
A homemade Star Wars parody rap that Flash turned into one of the most-watched animations of the pre-YouTube web.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Star Wars Gangsta Rap Special Edition
- Spread in
- 2000
- Began as
- A web animation
- Where it started
- newgrounds
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A parody rap written and recorded by Jason Brannon and Chris Crawford as Bentframe, in which the Emperor announces that it is not the east side or the west side but the Dark Side, and Vader agrees. In 2000 the animator Thomas Lee found the track and built a Flash music video around it to practise; the result put Darth Vader, Yoda and Luke Skywalker into a hip-hop video with dancing stormtroopers.
It was the top video on Newgrounds for six months, at a point when Newgrounds was where internet animation happened and YouTube did not exist. It also demonstrated the pre-YouTube pipeline in full: an audio track passed around independently, an animator adopting it without being asked, and the two parties forming a studio afterwards because the thing had worked.
It won the first Audience Choice Award at Lucasfilm's own Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards — a rights holder formally endorsing a parody of itself, which was not the industry norm in 2000. A completely redrawn Special Edition debuted at the 2004 awards, with the original audio untouched.
Why it is here: it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This began as a web animation, not as a video upload. Originally published on Newgrounds.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a web animation, not as a video upload. Originally published on Newgrounds.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.