Last year, Milwaukee-based musician, producer, actor, and videographer Wes Tank went viral by rapping Dr. Seuss books over beats made by Dr. Dre. Those early-pandemic videos garnered millions of YouTube views, earned oodles of press from renowned publications and programs all over the world, and eventually found the experienced rapper co-creating and hosting his own series called StoryRaps. Fewer than two years removed from those first hit videos, Tank has found success as a children’s entertainer.
Along the way, Tank earned an artist residency at Betty Brinn Children’s Museum, where he’ll perform this weekend as part of the Milwaukee museum’s Betty Boo’s Spooktacular event. In advance of those performances—set to take place at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 30—during the Spooktacular, Tank decided to transform a beloved Halloween book into a full-on rap track.
This time around, the Milwaukee rapper—who previously adapted “The Haunted Palace” and “Skeleton Dance” for his StoryRaps series on Kidoodle TV—is giving the hip-hop treatment to It’s Halloween, a 1977 children’s book written by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Marylin Hafner. The latest video in his “Cover 2 Cover” series, which was filmed by Kelly Michael Anderson, finds Tank spending time outside heavily-decorated Bay View homes like the A&J Halloween House and Nightmare Before Christmas Street. With the book in hand, Tank raps the pre-teen prose over a beat produced and mixed by Seakn.
Before Tank performs the song and other “not too scary” tracks to suit the season at Betty Brinn Children’s Museum this Saturday, you can watch his take on Jack Prelutsky’s It’s Halloween now.