The strange history behind Brian Wilson’s lost rap song ‘Smart Girls’

The world is mourning the loss of music icon Brian Wilson, who died Wednesday at 82. The beloved beating heart of the Beach Boys was one of the most influential and consequential minds and voices in music history. From innovations in recording to profound lyricism to emotive sounds that have become irrevocably intertwined with our memories and the very fabric of Americana, that constant creativity has led his brain and our ears down the road to some … let’s say “daring” and “provocative” efforts that didn’t have quite the same pop culture footprint of “Pet Sounds.”

Wilson never seemed to encounter a genre, instrument or movement he didn’t want to incorporate into his soundscape. That’s why it’s equally surprising and totally believable that at the very start of the ‘90s he recorded a rap song, “Smart Girls.” According to Wilson’s first memoir, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” a memoir that has been challenged several times in court, the idea came about when Wilson and his camp were watching an episode of hip-hop’s cable epicenter “Yo! MTV Raps” one day and noticed how many rap songs were putting girls down, whereas Wilson wanted to make something that uplifted women. The idea of Wilson watching an episode of “Raps” may seem unlikely itself, whether the show was in its Fab 5 Freddy or Ed Lover and Doctor Dre incarnations, but back in 1987 the Fat Boys remade Beach Boys’ “Wipeout” that the band appeared in the video for, so hip-hop being in Wilson’s orbit isn’t entirely far-fetched.

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“Smart Girls,” depending on whose mythology you read, was supposed to be the centerpiece and/or big closing number of his Sire Records album “Sweet Insanity.” Wilson’s second memoir, “I Am Brian Wilson,” mentions that it’s an album he didn’t want to make and every corner of it was dictated by his onetime therapist Eugene Landy (whom Wilson got a restraining order from in 1992 and who would die in 2006). Wilson states Landy’s intention with the title (that Wilson himself hated) and the album’s concept was the beautiful things that could come from mental illness — which would half-explain why the production and lyrics of “Smart Girls” sound like such a pastiche of Wilson’s legendary discography and the shared collective memories of him within the American music zeitgeist.

That style of production wasn’t too far removed from sample-heavy, Bomb Squad-style hip-hop of the time, and the beats on “Smart Girls” were handled by legendary hip-hop producer Matt Dike (Beastie Boys’ “Hey Ladies,” Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing,” Young MC’s Grammy-winning “Bust A Move” and eventually Insane Clown Posse’s “Halls of Illusions”). According to Dan Leroy’s 2007 book about unreleased albums, “The Greatest Music Never Sold,” “health-nut”-era Wilson told Dike that he thought the song was going to make “millions,” to which Dike (who passed away in 2018) thought “What are you, f—ing nuts?!”

That contradicts Wilson’s public commentary on the song at the time. After the “Sweet Insanity” album was rejected by Sire, who specifically cited “Smart Girls” as one of the big reasons for the shelving, Wilson and Landy sent out copies of “Smart Girls” as a cassette single that Christmas to fans with the note “read about why he wrote a rap song in his just published Harper Collins autobiography” and “This is a limited edition cassingle and not for sale. Only 250 will be manufactured as a personal gift from Brian Wilson to you for the holidays.”

One of those cassingles, or perhaps a subsequent bootleg, landed in the hands of novelty comedy radio host Dr. Demento who had Wilson on his show as a guest in January 1992. After a miraculous conversation transition from Wilson discussing the physical abuse he endured from his father, Wilson introduced “Smart Girls” as “It’s a white rap song, that’s all I can say for it … we figured we could do our own brand of rap.”

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While other songs from the still-unreleased “Sweet Insanity” would be rerecorded and eventually released on subsequent Wilson projects, namely 2004’s “Gettin In Over My Head,” “Smart Girls” never saw an official release. Still, it’s been circulated among Beach Boys fans through compilations likes Endless Bummer, a legendary fan curated “worst of the Beach Boys” bootleg nestled beside drunk performances of “Good Vibrations” and “You’re So Beautiful,” a Spanish version of “Kokomo,” a demo written by Charles Manson and the re-written commercial jingles for Hyatt Regency and Budweiser (“Be True to Your Bud”).

But for all the things wrong with “Smart Girls,” there’s something to be said for both Wilson’s openness to rap at a time when many rock icons were still not even considering it music, as well as humbly enlisting someone like Matt Dike to help instead of the hubris of thinking he could just make a rap song by himself.

Wilson experimented a lot musically; while some of these results were songs about transcendental meditation or lyrics that were just directions to his house and trying to remember a phone number (“Busy Doin’ Nothing”), a significant number of these experiments resulted in some of the greatest pieces of music to ever exist. Even if we don’t have quite as many personal milestones tied to “Smart Girls,” Brian Wilson soundtracked our lives, and we’re all the better for it.