The Guy Who Wrote Rodney Dangerfield's Rap Song Sat Next To Me On A Concert Shuttle Bus And Complained About Getting No Respect

The day I'm typing this, Tuesday, August 25th, is the ten-year anniversary of one of the funniest random encounters I've ever had. The gist: I was on a shuttle bus from NYC Port Authority to MetLife stadium to see a Bruce Springsteen concert when a very talkative, peculiar man, seated directly in front of us, mentioned he wrote the song "Rappin' Rodney" for Rodney Dangerfield. I have never been this delighted in my life to hear any piece of information that did not affect my life personally.

Now, we did not ask this man if he wrote "Rappin' Rodney." That is not really a question anyone can ask and expect an affirmative answer. This is really the kind of information that can only be offered up unprompted. Let's put it this way: If I had written "Rappin' Rodney" for Rodney Dangerfield, I'd be telling every stranger I met that I was the creative force behind "Rappin' Rodney.' And you better believe the people within earshot on the way to a rock concert are going to hear all about it.

¹If you're unfamiliar with "Rappin' Rodney," as you've probably guessed, it is a rap song performed by Rodney Dangerfield. I will explain more ahead.

I first wrote this post a few days after it happened when I worked at Uproxx, but, as with a lot of the work I did there over the course of ten years, it is no longer online. Though, I messed this story up the first time. I got way too cute with the title and no one read it. You might be surprised to learn the title, "The Wild, The Innocent, and Rappin' Rodney" did not set internet records. A combination of the title of a Bruce Springsteen album from 1973 and a novelty song from 1983 did not pierce the zeitgeist as I had hoped.

(Speaking of Uproxx: my former editor there, Keith Phipps, and I have a still somewhat new Harrison Ford podcast, Ford Focus. We have a new episode today on Witness and we are joined by Anthony Breznican, who comes with a whole host of Harrison Ford stories. It's fun! Here is the link for Spotify. Here is the link for Apple. Here is our Patreon page and Witness was specifically requested by a Patreon member.)

Now, there are many posts over the years where I know, "This is not going to do well," but I had to turn something in because I had a full time job and that's the way it works. And August is a particularly difficult month because there's just not a lot going on. But I had struck gold! I had randomly met the man who wrote "Rappin' Rodney." But the title I gave it was openly off-putting. Hence why, now, the title is straightforward. (Though, I realize the new title isn't that much better. There's just no good way to title this one.)

Here is that piece again, with some updated commentary from 2026.

The Wild, The Innocent, And Rappin' Rodney

On Thursday evening, I boarded a bus that would eventually put me at a four-hour long Bruce Springsteen concert – just two days after seeing a just under four-hour Bruce Springsteen concert. (One note about this: It really is amazing to see. Bruce has had a reputation for long shows, but these are two of his longest of all time. He doesn’t take any breaks. He doesn’t even leave the stage for the encores. It defies all logic for a guy turning 67 next month, but here we are.) But the length of this particular show, or Springsteen in general, is not the point of any of this.

Probably my favorite thing about seeing Springsteen (well, other than the show) are the characters you meet along the way. To get from New York City out across the Hudson to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, there’s a fairly efficient shuttle bus service that runs from the Port Authority (which really is a dreadful place) to the stadium. On Thursday, I would be on this shuttle bus along with a friend of mine who was experiencing his first Springsteen show. As we left the Port Authority, things seemed normal.

In front of us² sat a nice-enough, talkative man from Danbury, Connecticut who has seen Bruce Springsteen 138 times. (I know he’s from Danbury, Connecticut because every story he told included Danbury. I am now aware that Danbury, Connecticut could use some rain. I hope they get it.) Again, I want to stress that this seemed like a very nice man and I found his stories amusing – one of them involved how he was taking acting classes, including the exact location where these classes take place – but it was a little bewildering why he was telling these stories to really no one in particular. (There was a man sitting to this man’s left who got the brunt of these stories, but these two gentlemen did not come together.)

²What I neglected to mention the first time was the shuttle bus was getting ready to pull away and this was one of those, "Whoa whoa, we've got one more passenger before you go," type situations, with the only open seat being right in front of us. I asked my friend Brandon what he remembers and and he wrote back, "I just remember as soon as that guy stepped on the bus, we both kind of noticed him and thought, 'oh this looks like a character.' And then we were kind of delighted when he sat in the empty seat in front of us."

But then something magical happened. Like, seriously: pure magic. You have to understand, he was telling story after story about harmless nonsense. Again, fine. But then, after all of those, he said these magical words: “Have you ever heard of a comedian named Rodney Dangerfield?”

(This is a free post for "free tier" subscribers. But, The Hard Pass truly only exists because of paying subscribers who can read the story I was told about Tom Cruise that is now my favorite Tom Cruise story, the time I accidentally tricked a Lost actor into spoiling the ending, and asking cast members from Ocean's 12 if their characters all know they look like famous people since Tess knows she looks like Julia Roberts.)