A happily defiant Ron Funches will not recant the whole "OutKast is better than The Beatles" thing
Anyone who’s ever been delighted by the lilting cadence of Ron Funches’ indefatigably hilarious stand-up knows that the comedian, actor, and current philosophical shark-man isn’t hear to pick a fight. Still, the ever-sunny host of the new, weed-centric cooking show spinoff series Chopped 420 wasn’t backing down on Monday’s edition of The Late Late Show With James Corden, telling his Trolls World Tour co-star Corden that his recent, controversial tweet is “100 percent” true.
The offending-to-some tweet reads as follows:
When society admits OutKast is better than The Beatles then we can truly start healing.
— Funch (@RonFunches) April 4, 2021
That’s some strong stuff from the usually soothing host of the Gettin’ Better With Ron Funches podcast, especially for white Baby Boomers who have no idea who Ron Funches, Big Boi, or Andre 3000 are. And that’s before the ensuing uproar was only exacerbated by the official OutKast Twitter account retweeting Funches’ claim, complete with that shocked eyes emoji. Make of that what you will, but Funches, noting that Andre 3000 himself reached out to the comic after his bold public stance, was not backpedaling in the face of some disproportionate outrage about a personal music opinion. He also rebuffed Corden’s suggestion that Andre had contacted Funches through such pedestrian means as a DM, explaining that, as everyone knows, Andre 3000 only communicates through messenger owls. (As to Andre’s promise of a thank you gift in the mail, Ron could only hope that his reward takes the form of “a handmade flute that doesn’t work.”)
And Funches is not kidding (about OutKast, or the flute thing), reflecting on his tweet and sighing, “How can someone be so young and so poignant?” But the comedian did go on to back up his assessment of the relative merits of two bands he quite likes by saying of OutKast, “Some of the things that I grew up, and some of the things that I value aren’t necessarily given the same amount of worth, and I think that OutKast and the things that they’ve done, for the music industry, how they’ve moved the entire rap industry to Atlanta, how they changed it from like rapping about drugs, to rapping about art, rapping about your life.” Plus, Funches added as an afterthought, “Erykah Badu over Yoko Ono all day.”
Regardless of where one falls on the OutKast-Beatles beef, Funches went on to show all the ways in which he is truly living his best life. Or maybe, as he told Corden, his reward for a previous, really spectacular life, as not only is the recently married comic and actor deeply happy with his whole family situation, he’s about to rent out an entire, COVID-abandoned movie theater for a private showing of the new Mortal Kombat movie in honor of his beloved son Malcolm’s 18th birthday. Funches also showed off the Ron Funches-branded Autism Acceptance Month Pumas he designed to honor Malcom, noting happily, “I got cut from JV basketball!” And then there’s Chopped 420, where Ron Funches gets to taste cannabis-infused delicacies cooked by some of the finest chefs in the world and get paid for it, and we’re beginning to see how Funches might worry that he’s actually in some sort of Matrix pod having a virtual reality ideal life. Still, if you check the schedule, Chopped 420 premieres today on Discovery +, so it seems like we’re at least all in the same Ron Funches illusory paradise. Could be much worse.