Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 01/18/2012 at 1:15 PM News

The Popdust Files: blades of glory, jay-z, jon heder, kanye west, Niggas In Paris, Samples

“I was completely flattered when they asked if they could sample me into the song,” Will Ferrell has said of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Niggas and Paris.” “And when I heard it for the first time, I just started to laugh because it felt so surreal. But I really did like the song.” He was, of course, talking about the song’s mid-song dialogue breakdown, where Ferrell discusses how a statement (in the song’s context, Kanye’s claims of having his “niggas in Paris, and they goin’ gorillas”) may be meaningless, but also “provocative…it gets the people going.”

Of course, there is another famous participant in that dialogue, sampled from ice-skating comedy Blades of Glory—Ferrell’s co-star Jon Heder, who was recently asked about his own opinions of the song on FUSE. “I have heard it,” claimed Heder of “Paris.” “I’m not quite sure what the connection is but, I feel very honored… It’s pretty smooth.” Of course, Heder hoped to get a little something out of the pilfering, but to no avail. “I heard about it after the fact and I called up my manager [and] was like,  ‘What’s going on here? Is there some kind of compensation happening?’…”[He answered], ‘The glory of the song is your compensation Jon. Listen to it.”

Amen, Heder’s agent person. It’s not every day you get to be an inextricable part of one of the best rap songs of the 21st century—though somehow, Heder is unconvinced about the song’s immortality, answering a question about being part of rap history with the brush-off “We have to give it a couple years to see if it’s history.” Um, we thought you said you had heard the song, Jon. If you really did, you’d know that such a qualifying statement is entirely unnecessary—and a little insulting, if you ask us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sWOXS_Aklk

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