Lost at Birth – Pineapple Express

The song I chose for this week’s blog post is Lost at Birth by Public Enemy in the movie Pineapple Express and it begins at around 2:25 into the excerpt. The clip is of Daniel Mcbride and Seth Rogen gearing up to go save their friend played by Dave Franco who was kidnapped by weed dealers. After Seth Rogen gives a passionate speech to the character Red about moral values and redemption they team up after a movie of being enemies and load up for war and that is when “Lost at Birth” by Public Enemy begins to play in the background.

I thought the combination of this specific song with this movie and more importantly with this scene was priceless and genius because the song has to do with being lost at birth, being a savage, and a killer and these two are clearly none of those things. It’s funny and very clever that the director of Pineapple Express would use this song during a scene where they are loading up for war and practicing getting ready to shoot someone in a clearly comedic way because having such an aggressive song playing in the background I think is genius, definitely adding a lot to the theme of the scene and to the overall effect of the movie, which is that these guys are clearly in way over their heads. In this regard It also adds to the effect of Red leaving Seth Rogen’s side at the end of the clip because the music fades out, along with his adrenaline and he realizes it might not be such a great idea for them to try and ambush a bunch of gangsters. If you haven’t seen this movie I definitely encourage you to put some time to the side and watch it, it is for sure one of the funnier movies of the past decade and if you are unfamiliar with Public Enemy and consider yourself a Hip Hop head i definitely suggest you look them up, they are some of the kings of conscious rap and one the many pioneers of the craft, big ups to the creators of Pineapple Express for recognizing their talent and inserting them into one of the funniest scenes in any movie.