Childhood & Early Life
Not much is known about Rucka’s origin and formative years. He was born on January 27, 1987. There is barely any other information available on Rucka’s childhood including the name of his parents or the place of his origin.
There is a raging debate about Rucka’s race among his fans. Some say that he is a White American, while others say that he may be Mexican, Russian, Black or even Chinese. The truth, however, remains unknown.
Career
Rucka is a product of the internet taking over the entertainment industry. Before he became a YouTube sensation, Rucka entered MySpace in 2006 and released his first single there. The song was titled ‘I Heart Crack’ and became an instant hit on the social networking site.
He went on to create a sort of a virtual alter-ego, namely, DJ Not Nice, on MySpace, which catered to the racist jokes and rap that he performed on the site. He would perform parodies and other stereotypical jokes on Asians under this pseudonym.
The method of his acquiring fans on MySpace was rather unconventional. He would post comments on other popular videos on the site exclaiming that those videos were racist. What drew people’s attention to his comments was that he would write them in all capital letters. He got unusually high traffic to his account because of these comments.
However, these comments were the ones that were responsible for Rucka’s account being deactivated by the website coordinators, as they were perceived as spam. His account was deleted on February 14, 2008. He created a new account on the very same day and continues to use it even today.
Later the same year, Rucka released his first album and named it ‘Straight Outta West B’. This album was created by combining all the songs that he had previously released on his MySpace account.
Post the release of the album, Rucka contacted MC Serch for an internship program at the hit radio station, Hot 102.7 WHTD. And thus began a relationship that changed Rucka’s life. He was given a sixty second slot at MC Serch’s hit show, ‘Serchlite Saturdays’. His segment was called ‘Rucka’s Rant of the Week’ and it became very popular among the listeners of the show.
Impressed by that, MC Serch encouraged Rucka to write parodies which they could air on the radio. Rucka came back next week with ‘I can Do Whatever I’m White’, which was a parody of ‘Whatever You Like’ by TI. The song was aired on the radio and got amazing response, not all of which was good. Some people were extremely displeased and offended by the song and telephoned the station complaining.
However, seeing the success of the segment, it was continued on air for several weeks where Rucka would do a parody of a famous song every week. The station actively promoted these songs even on their YouTube and television channel. This continued for almost a year before Serchlite TV channel was suspended for playing it on their television channel.
Rucka’s biggest hit from this period was the ‘Ching Chang chong’ song, which was a parody of ‘Boom boom Pow’ by Black eyed peas. It garnered tens of millions of views on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube moderators on the ground that it violated YouTube’s Community Guidelines.
After Serchlite’s TV channel was suspended because of his songs, Rucka decided to go the independent way for his future endeavors. He decided to release his albums through Pinegrove Records and has done so for each of his albums except ‘Black Man of Steal’.
Rucka kept uploading his works on his independent YouTube account, which had quite a fan base by that point, who called themselves Rucka’s Nuckas. Apart from parodies, he also did an original rap song ‘Send That Bitch a Kissy Face’ and uploaded it on YouTube.
As mentioned earlier, most of what Rucka did were parodies of somewhat racist manner. For that reason, he has a number of alter egos through which he performs his parodies. Some of the well-known alter egos are DJ Not Nice, Seymour Schwartz and Toby Queef, which he used to mock the Asian, the Jewish and the White American Redneck respectively.
Rucka also did a video blog on YouTube where he talked about how his channels were continuously removed by YouTube moderators. As a matter of fact, 17 channels which he created were disabled by the authorities for various violations of the policies of the site.
Rucka has done eight albums till now. Four of these have been featured in the Billboard Top Comedy Albums. The most well-known among these is probably ‘I’m Black, You’re White & These Are Clearly Parodies’, which reached the sixth position on the list.
Apart from his musical career, Rucka has had a minor stint in television as well. He created a jingle for Happy’s Pizza Inc in 2009 and gave his voice to a 3D animated character for the same. He has also tried his hand at podcasts. His first podcast, ‘Rucka’s Late Night Power Hour’ aired in 2011 and ran through 2012. He discontinued it later and came up with a new one named ‘The Rucka Nucka Podcast’.
At present, Rucka is working on his website where he uploads his songs and other performances without the obstruction of outside forces. His website, ruckasworld.com, is in itself a parody, much like his other works.
