Israeli music video explained!

Wouldn't you know, about the time I wondered if she'd get back to me, I heard from our Middle East bureau, Gili Bar-Hillel in Tel Aviv, as she was getting ready to send me a message anyway. So, here's her report:

The rap video you've linked to is a song I know well — disturbingly, my four-year-old loves this song and perks up whenever it's on the radio. He could recognize the opening chords and say the lyrics before I even registered that the song existed. But I had no idea the clip was Ozzy: the lyrics aren't, though they work well with the video. The song is called
"Free and Easy" by a group called "Prison Six" (named after a military prison in Israel), and it samples an older song called "The King's Road" which was Israel's submission to the Eurovision song competition some years back. "The King's Road" (an idiom meaning, roughly, "the road to success") is a rather sappy song: the new version pokes fun at it. For the Eurovision
competition the song was sung by an eleven year old boy (whose name, coincidentally, was Gili) who ultimately blanked and choked up on stage, poor kid. Members of "Prison Six" are Itamar "Young" Elyasi, Amir "Baby J" Paz and Amit "Six"; the video was produced by EyalB studio (http://www.eyalb.com).

Here's a very rough translation of "Free and Easy", just to give you the gist of it. Some of the bits that seem totally random are justified by rhymes and puns in the original. I've italicized the lines that were originally from "The King's Road". I see the italics didn't copy into this email. They're not that important, but maybe you can see them in the word document.

Free and Easy/The King's Road — Prison Six
(Hofshi Umeshukhrar/Derekh Hamelekh — Keleh Shesh)

[Toto:]
Morning dew has quenched my thirst and a king's road stretches before me
A harp and crown have connected me to a song of praise
My thoughts still churning within me, a ray of sun strokes me
And cuts off my thread of thought

[Scarecrow:]
Yo
Let me explain, let me remind you
Let me turn back the wheel
Give me an answer, name a price (a price)
I don't want to wake up in the morning in the same place
Don't want to always know where life will take me today
Today or tomorrow, same thing
I feel stuck, stuck
My life flies by, weekends, weeks
I want to know where my life is heading, so busy worrying
About what will become of me, that I forget to live
Surrounded by doors, surrounded by questions with no answers
There's a road for everyone, but you don't always find it
And if the road itself is joy and happiness to all who walk it
There's nothing here for me, I've been ruling it for 20 years

I look around, my steed is handsome, it carries me upon its back
To the king's road
The king's road is my only road
The king's harp is my song
The king's road is my dream, my riddle
The king's harp my only love

[Lion:]
The king's road, I wish
A slave's road is more like it
I've gone from door to door
Like a delusional kid (a kid in a movie) surviving on luck
How can you go for the crown when you're weighed down with loot?
People are missing the point
What's better: living it smalltime?
A farmer, that's just some title
I believe in purity of weapons (or, to maintain the pun: I'm entitled to bear arms)
I have a degree (a title) in messing up and starting from scratch (from zero)
I don't feel like a nobody
I always come full circle, but leave a door open
I've been called a nobody (a zero) all my life
They scream I'm worth six zeros today
After six misses, I've finally hit
I'm in, Mr. Itamar doesn't get blown off

[Toto:]
I look around, my steed is handsome, it carries me upon its back (note that "steed" is Dorothy)
To the king's road
The king's road is my only road
The king's harp is my song
The king's road is my dream, my riddle
The king's harp my only love

[Tinman:]
Yo, I keep going cause there's no other way
Without knowing where I'll be in another day or what each minute will bring
I've never sat around doing nothing
I've had hopes, disappointments, heartbreak,
I've taken tips for the road from people I love
Armed with wisdom and experience
I've learned to check out the territory, aim for posterity
And if I fail I won't miss the moral. For sure
And so I suppose that what life has taught me
No school can teach
I look to the future but keep my eyes on the road
I'll take the right path and become king

[Toto:]
I look around, my steed is handsome, it carries me upon its back
To the king's road
The king's road is my only road
The king's harp is my song
The king's road is my dream, my riddle
The king's harp my only love (repeat ad naseum)

As I said, I didn't know the video was Ozzy until I saw it on your site. This same group has another, different song that actually mentions Oz explicitly: "There's no place like home isn't just some crappy sentence from that girl in The Wizard of Oz.