The second annual Fart Awards show will take place next month in Los Angeles. The first show was held last year, after a long and unsuccessful legal battle by the Fart Artists Association (the F.A.A.) to force the Grammy Awards to recognize fart music as a category.

Although The Recording Academy, which selects the winners of the Grammy Awards each year, refused to grant an official interview for the purpose of this article, citing ongoing litigation with the F.A.A, an insider with the Academy, speaking off the record, told this journalist that the Academy’s position on fart music has not changed.

“Most of the board members recognize that a bad precedent was set when we let rap music in. The time has come to draw the line. Music is not like T-Ball, where every five-year-old gets a trophy. Not that I’m against five-year-olds getting trophies, but at some point, you reach an age where you have to do more than just fart to get an award.

“OK, we screwed up when we created the term ‘rap artist,’ but what else could we call them? They’re not singing, so we couldn’t call them ‘rap singers.’ Are we supposed to call them rap talkers?”

Not unsurprisingly, a spokesperson for the Royal Academy of Flatulence, which annually selects the winners of the Fart Awards, agreed, pointing out that “Swagga Like Us,” which contains the following refrain, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Song of 2008:

1. No one on the corner have swagga like us
   Swagga like us, swagga like us
   No one on the corner have swagga like us
   Swagga like us, swagga like us
   

“There are 12 people listed in the songwriting credits for ‘Swagga Like Us,’” said the Royal Academy’s spokesperson. “Credits is a misnomer. Blame would be a better word. I suspect there were twelve people listed because no one person was willing to accept the blame.”

To better understand the fart artists’ position, we interviewed Lil Dwayne, who has been nominated in 2009 for both Best Solo Fart Performance and Best Fart Song for his smash hit, “Gas Eruption,” which was the follow-up to his first hit, “Intestinal Fartitude.” Although Lil Dwayne, at 5’4”, is diminutive in stature, he delivers a powerful performance on his latest CD, Classical Gas, in which he gives his own personal interpretation of some of the world’s best-loved classical music.

Antonio: Explain your position that recorded farting warrants special recognition as an art form, more so than rap.

Dwayne: Well, first off, fart rhymes with art. Rap doesn’t. It rhymes with crap.

AW: What goes into the making of a successful fart artist?

LD: Intensive training and diet. Mostly diet.

AW: Let’s talk about the diet for a minute. What diet does a typical, successful fart artist follow? Lots of beans, I would imagine.

LD: Yeah, that’s what everybody thinks. Beans are the foundation of every fart artist’s diet, but they’ll only give you the middle-range notes. To hit the higher and lower notes, there are other, secret dietary factors to be considered, which I’m not willing to disclose.

AW: Women seem to be lagging behind in fart music, much like rap. What reasons do you attribute to that?

LD: Well, I’m going to be accused of being sexist, but women just don’t fart as much as men. They don’t close their mouths long enough for the pressure to build up.

AW: You are often referred to as the “Father of Fart Music.” How did you create this new type of music, which some people are calling the most original concept to come along in the music industry in the last 40 years?

LD: Well, I was sitting around after a rap recording session with my producer one day, when I happened to break wind something awful. My producer got real excited and told me, “Lil D, that was awesome. Do you think you can recreate that same, raw energy in the studio?” I told him, yeah, I thought I could, depending on what I ate for breakfast.

AW: Some of your critics have lambasted fart artists for making millions of dollars for what is basically Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

LD: Hey, man, at least we ain’t hurting anybody. It’s not like we took off with millions of dollars and ran the world into a recession, like one of those CEOs of one of those big banks.

AW: After two big hits, is there a world tour in the offing?

LD: Not until someone comes up with an effective intestinal deodorant. Man, when I play live, people just clear out of the place.