Is This The Greatest Rap About Workplace Safety You've Ever Heard?

16 January 2015 | 5:48 pm | Staff Writer

The correct answer is "yes", as long as you're wearing a helmet

US-based shipyard Newport News Shipbuilding takes its safety practices pretty seriously, but that doesn't mean it's above letting its employees have a bit of fun with the ways in which the message gets through. 

Each year, the one-time largest privately owned shipyard in the country (now a part of parent company Huntington Ingalls Industries) hosts an annual Safety Song Contest, with a prize of $1000 and a professionally produced music video going to the winning submission.

This year's victor, titled I Wanna Be Safe, won the 2014 competition ahead of fellow entrants such as All About SafetyFriend Of SafetyGot To Be SafeJust Being SafeProtect You, Protect MeResponsibility (Falls On You And Me) and S.A.F.E, netting its composer, employee Derek Wilson, the grand in cash as well as a totally slick music video put together with assistance from Newport News Shipbuilding's Video Training & Communications Department. Previous winners have included Alfred Flythe's Safety First (2011) and Accident Free, by Gary Moore (2012).

Throughout the clip, Wilson and his fellow shipbuilders lay down sick rhymes about not endangering yourself or your co-workers aboard a range of ships, including the USS EnterpriseGerald R. Ford and a series of Virginia-class submarines (for the naval enthusiasts among you), all of which amounts to a genuinely enjoyable, socially responsible, three-and-a-half minutes of hard-workin' folks letting their creative sides utterly shine (seriously, they're not bad) while dropping encouraging reminders like "Newport News Shipbuilding, man, we the best/ Before you light your torch, 60-second drop test". 

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Although announced as a winner late last year, Wilson's video clip has only just made it up online, so kick back and enjoy what is quite possibly the greatest rap about workplace safety you'll ever encounter, and maybe take some of his advice under advisement at the same time.