By Ed Uncovered and Reticent Bob

It started, like most EU articles, with an idle chat. It ended, 12 hours later, with this: an exposé of ‘Pato’ Patrice Wilson, the grinning goon behind such pop gems as Friday and the infuriatingly infuriating Chinese Food.

It had been such an erudite week on Ed Uncovered as well. On Monday, Daniel wrote a guest blog about smartphone addiction. On Tuesday, Craig wrote about web design. Today, the ante has been upped and the tone lowered with a profile of Rebecca Black’s rapper aka the greatest threat white America’s tweens have ever faced.

Chinese Food

When I began researching Patrice Wilson, I knew this much:

Nigerian singer/songwriter

Founder of ARK Music Factory and Pato Music World (PMV)

Co-writer, co-producer and rapper on Rebecca Black’s Friday

Performs similar duties on Alison Gold’s Chinese Food, released two days ago

As I began to dig deeper (y’know, past the first page of Google) things took a more sinister turn however. Within minutes, Pato went from being a phenomenally successful viral music producer to…well, we’ll get to that in a moment.

First though, a word from Reticent Bob, whose Facebook message had gotten the ball rolling:

“That Chinese Food song is amazeballs,” wrote Bob (who may or may not be the same ‘Bob’ who featured in The Best Piss Ever and Why Do Asians Take So Many Photos?). Bob had just finished reading yesterday’s web design blog, which noted: “Stuffing pages full of ads…is more annoying than Chinese Food.”

Suffice to say the article wasn’t speaking about dim sum. No, it was referencing the latest offering from the one-trick Pato. If you’ve yet to experience Chinese Food, we may as well get it out of the way now because, like it or not, you’re going to see it sooner or later.

As a fun game to play, watch Chinese Food and count the number of things that are wrong with the video. Not musically wrong – just wrong. Lest there be any doubt, its cardinal sins are listed at the end of this article.

Assuming you’ve just watched Chinese Food in its entirety, you will now be experiencing what can only be described as a WTF moment. Where does one even begin?

I began with a light Google which revealed that Ed Uncovered isn’t the only site questioning Pato’s motives. Gawker described his breakthrough video with Rebecca Black as an “obnoxious and catchy adolescent shitshow”, while Cracked.com (which is rarely funny but often right) seethed “Patrice Wilson sacrificed a young girl to the Internet in order to perpetuate his own renown.”

Only Cracked wasn’t speaking about Rebecca Black – it was speaking about 12-year-old Nicole Westbrook, the star of Pato’s second major hit. As the article explained, “Patrice Wilson…followed a formula that he stumbled upon with Rebecca Black to ensure that everyone despised his next music video, because that was the only way he could guarantee that it would be watched by millions and millions of people.”

If you’ve yet to see the track – It’s Thanksgiving – now’s your chance, but if you can make it past the first chorus without spilling vomit on your sweater, there is something deeply wrong with you. Perhaps not Patrice Wilson wrong, but certainly a little odd.

As I was viewing the video for the first and only time, my girlfriend walked in.

“If you’re turned on by watching that, you’re a paedophile,” she scolded.

“Bob sent me the link,” I protested.

“Well he’s a paedophile too.”

Behind the music

While Gawker and Cracked focused on deconstructing the songs themselves – an admittedly ripe hunting ground – I decided to delve deeper into Pato’s life. What I found may not shock you, but it’ll certainly disturb you. If you’re a parent, you may even find yourself letting out an “Eww!” as you ponder how to protect your kids from this big bad world.

Let’s be clear: Patrice ‘I rhyme broccoli with Monopoly’ Wilson is a wrong ‘un.

He may look like a ball of fun in his panda suit – just as he looks harmless enough rapping in Rebecca Black’s car – but peer a little closer and you’ll find a litany of misdeeds.

How old is Pato anyway? The internet doesn’t know and Pato sure as hell ain’t saying. Age doesn’t seem to trouble Patrice Wilson.

He may look like one of the Watson twins (both of them in fact), but according to Wikipedia, the pop mogul goes by the nickname of Fat Usher. Here at EU however we found ourselves thinking of R Kelly, what with Pato’s love for fresh beats.