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I got this from Both Teams Played Hard (the name of the website taken from an infamous Rasheed Wallace quote). They compiled the best 50 NBA Commercials available on YouTube. A couple of things stand out about this commercial. Three actually.
It holds up pretty well over time. I got the same chills watching it this time around as I did the first time I saw it. And I even remember thinking that homeboy in the red doesn’t really belong in the piece at all. What does he really do other than dance? I could do that!
The second is that this definitely needs to be higher on the list than what it was. I think it cracked the top ten but I’m thinking top 3, easy.
The third is that I can’t think of a better way to represent hip-hop without showing a single MC, DJ, or tagger.
Hey Lester.
Man, that is TIGHT. Thanks for posting that!
Prof. Spence,
I couldn’t agree more. I applaud you for your ability to break from the suffocating categories of MC, DJ, B-Boy, Graff Writer, etc. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. This is why hip-hop (not Techno, sorry, Les) better indicates humanity’s reach for a new Universal, one which amalgamates all things separate and which reveals how our struggles are more alike than they have ever been.
Les, twenty years ago, basketball was basketball, now it is increasingly difficult to talk in terms of basketball and hip-hop in the same way, as mutually exclusive things.
Come check me out. Its been a minute, but I’m back in the groove of things.
http://www.democracyandhiphop.com
How you been?
you’ve been trying to make a claim for hip-hop both instead of and versus other forms of electronic music. i don’t see how you can make that claim in general, particularly given that other electronic forms are much more powerful abroad. further i don’t see how you can make that claim off of this commercial. i can take a montage of jordan dunks to talk about how basketball has changed and grown over the years…but it’d be goofy for me to use such a montage to say that basketball was better than baseball.
good to see you back on the block. i hope everything is well on your end.
No sir.
I don’t think your example parallels mine, no where near it. And I think that you would know better than to state that this whole time I’ve simply been arguing that “hip-hop is better than rock”.
You posted a “basketball” commercial with the title, THIS is Hip-Hop. You see, like I see, the transitory hip-hop, the broad and encompassing. No other culture in history has been as broad and encompassing and isn’t because hip-hop has the magic recipe or because I’m going to be the Dad that hits his son over the head with an N.W.A. vinyl. It is a LOGICAL claim.
It is not my personal taste, either. Most of the music I listen to its early to mid 90s boom bap, but that is not my gauge for what’s real or true.
My claims are not because I want people to stop listening to Rock. When hip-hop becomes superceded (and it will) I will be okay with that. I’m not afraid of change, much unlike the folks who hold up Poor Righteous Teachers as the vanguard of hip-hop.
While for purposes of clarity I make determinations and categorizations, I’m not at all trying to make an “instead of” or “versus” argument. I’m rather trying to show the interdependence of things, particularly as it relates to hip-hop. I think the “instead of” argument is the problem.
We can START with categories, i.e. this is hip-hop, this is electronic, this is rock, but we can’t stay there or we wind up with fixed and permanent determinations. We both know that things, change, move, and develop one out of the other, and this is why, when trying to concretely understand hip-hop, we have to see the necessary interconnections and unity of things.
So now we break with those temporary categories and we see how Jazz grew out of Blues and Rock grew out of Jazz and Funk and Disco grew out of Rock and Hip-Hop grew out of Funk and Disco. That’s a crude demonstration indeed, for there wasn’t a perfectly linear development and then one day it was different. It was because of a struggle of opposites where one tendency overcomes the other.
I’ve consistently argued that music in general is reaching for a Universal (because the activity, the politics, of people is doing so) and this is not just a positivist and chauvinist view as hip-hop is a worldwide phenomenon. If it appeared as though electronic music was the general tendency, I would make a claim for it, but rather people are choosing to express themselves in a way that identifies them with the rest of the world.
I hope I’ve better explained.
The claim that “hip-hop is universal” is one that can be made and supported. The claim that “hip-hop is MORE universal” or “This is why hip-hop (not Techno, sorry, Les) better indicates humanity’s reach for a new Universal” is a different claim because it is comparative. We can say for example “X is a democracy” and then identify the various aspects of X that make it a democracy. But if we instead say that “X is more democratic than Y” then we have to make claims about X and about Y and ensure the claims we make enable them to be compared on some common standard.
This is what I’m suggesting you haven’t done. When you imply that “hip-hop is the general tendency” I don’t know what would cause you to make such a suggestion. Are you basing this on consumption? On record sales? On what?
I’d also suggest that the type of dialectical approach you’re taking to cultural production that pits hip-hop against other forms of electronic music is not necessary. That is, hip-hop can very well be universal, can be an opportunity for people to express themselves in new ways. But at the same time house music can be universal as well.
Agree to disagree. I reject the traditional logic and posit that we can do both simultaneously. We can make determinations about musical genres and place them into neat categories, and we can pull the rug from under those categories to see their interdependency. Out of the struggle of all these varying music forms, we can see which one or group are struggling to become the dominant, but the one that becomes the dominant has to be one that can’t be placed back into its old category, as it has broken down all of them.
I don’t base my determinations on CD sales, but I won’t discard that aspect. It isn’t just stats that accounts for Universality, but neither is it subjective empiricism.
It is a logic, though. Something will become the dominant, and whatever it is I’m okay with, but in my humble opinion hip-hop is the form by which all other forms are being subsumed and re-posited.
Whatever, its all good. The point is I like the commercial!! 🙂 How’s NY? My lady is up there right now and a close comrade of mine moved there last August. I’ve never been.
Peace.