Chef Aid – the South Park Album

CD Chef Aid COLUMBIA, 491700 2, 21 Track
“Ooh, suck on my chocolate salty balls / Stick ’em in your mouth and suck ’em.” If that line offends you, not only should you stop from reading any further, you should definitely avoid South Park at all costs. Rabid fans of the deliciously disgusting animated series, however, will rejoice at how perfect this disc is; rather than hand you a whack of semi-whimsical material, the South Park boys chose to give the people what they want, and what they want is plenty of songs by the cast of South Park, not just about them. So alongside SP-related performances by Master P (“Kenny’s Dead,” on which he raps, “My little homey Kenny died tonight”), Perry Farrell (“Hot Lava”), Elton John (“Wake Up Wendy”), and the bizarrely paired Ozzy Osbourne and Ol’ Dirty Bastard (“Nowhere to Run”), you’ll find the best of the best: songs sung by the original cast. Most appropriately, there is plenty of Chef (a.k.a. Isaac Hayes) action, including “Simultaneous” (“I’m talking ’bout you and me and Winona Ryder / Simultaneous”), his love song for Kathie Lee Gifford (“No Substitute”), and the aforementioned “Chocolate Salty Balls”. Chef Aid’s undisputed champion track, however, is the tender, passionate, and incredibly touching Styx cover, “Come Sail Away”–performed with more emotion than Neil Diamond could ever muster–by South Park‘s head cranky son of a crack whore, Cartman. Fans of the show will also be happy to know that this is not the sung-at-top-speed version, like in the episode, but instead a fully drawn out, tortured-artist cut. So often, the funniest ideas on TV fail to translate to albums; happily, this is not the case with this collection. –Denise Sheppard