Hip-Hop Videos Mocking Hip-Hop Videos

This may sound like a bit of an odd statement, but I think the main reason why I do not embrace the country music genre isn't because of the music, it's the result of the same factors which made me hold out on liking hip-hop for so long. It's because of the homogeneous, pretentious image that, it seems, nearly every one of its artists seems to employ. I completely understand the importance of image in popular music, but for me personally, I appreciate it exponentially more when I see someone take a chance and attempt to be different, as opposed to simply playing it safe and leaching off of an already established mode of artist portrayal within a given genre. Perhaps it's a product of my own ignorance or perhaps my evaluation is right on, but when I think of country music and its artists, I don't see a lot of originality. I feel like all of these people are going for the same image and singing about the same things (the theme of every song seems to either be completely jovial and ridiculously laid-back or overly sappy, brokenhearted, crying-in-your-booze sad). Plus, I typically find country music to be way over-produced when compared to any other kind of other music involving real instruments (i.e. excluding sample-based music like bubblegum pop and hip-hop), but that's beside the point. I think when most people who don't enjoy hip-hop music take a similar view to the one I have of country music. When they look at the broad scope of the genre, all they see are young, black men, all dressing the same, wearing ridiculous jewelery, trying to act tough, posing themselves as thugs and gangters. To these people, I'd assume it also probably seems like all rap lyrics are about the same themes as well: money, women, bling, drugs, rims, laffytaffy (not necessarily in that order). To me, that point of view is partly true, but only of the majority of mainstream hip-hop, which is the reason that I really appreciate artists who are able to take a step back and openly mock the artificiality of their own genre. That's why I've decided to post these two videos. The first is by the Roots and the second by the Game featuring Kanye West. They're both very similar in that they both poke fun at how homogeneous and predictable hip-hop videos generally are. The best part simply is that they both maintain that rare sense of humor in a world where so many musicians seem to take themselves too seriously.