Because when I think rap music, the first thing that comes to mind is… Newt Gingrich?

Perhaps not, but if you found that headline as jarring as I did, we should put in a disclaimer right up front: this is not a headline from the Onion.

Not many people would associate Newt Gingrich with rap music, but now one can, thanks to three enterprising Florida teenagers who wrote “Hoot for Newt.”

“Yeah hoot, hoot, hoot. Hey everybody vote for Newt,” is the chorus concocted by St. Lucie 18-year-olds Jason Johnson, Franco Hurtado, and Tyler Arcia.

People who showed up early for Gingrich’s speech in Port St. Lucie heard the song for the first time. The song did not play while Gingrich was at the event but they presented him with a CD afterward…

Among the song’s lyrics:

“Go ahead ask what your country can do for you because anything’s possible with president Newt. Yeah, so get up off your feet. Get up on the street and tell everyone you meet.

‘Hoot, hoot, hoot. Hey everybody vote for Newt.”

I will freely admit right up front that I don’t have a big background in the appreciation and enjoyment of rap music. I found the early work of Sugar Hill Gang interesting, and I recall enjoying the fusion experiment of Run DMC teaming up with Aerosmith for a remake of Walk This Way. During football season – as a perpetually disappointed Jets fan – I occasionally play their fan rap tune, Putcher Arms Out! But beyond that, like too many of my generation I’m sure, I mostly find rap music an exercise in self control reminding me not to throw anything at the car parked near my house with the doors rattling off from the base line.

But even with this admittedly limited knowledge, this particular tune strikes me as perhaps carrying a bit less of the old “street cred” than some of the more mainstream urban classics. Even if I weren’t looking at a picture of the “rap artists” involved, I’m guessing that it might bring some questions to mind. This doesn’t – at least to my untrained ear – sound like rap music as much as it invokes what a couple of alligator Polo shirt wearing kids from a gated community in Florida might think rap music would sound like.

But, as I said, I’m hardly the needed subject matter expert to judge. Click on the embed below, give it a listen and judge for yourself.