I went to high school from 1990 to 1994, a time when Ice Cube was at the height of his hip-hop power. Aside from demonstrating the skills to earn a spot as one of the all-time great mc’s and lyricists, Cube in this era was angry, candid, and viciously funny — the perfect traits to make him hero material for teenagers like me worldwide. This effect lingers even as an adult; when I had the chance to meet my former idol briefly at a Tower Records three years ago, I was transformed back to adolescence and completely starstruck.
I’ve also already professed my unapologetic love of skating videos so I should be enthralled with the new Nike P.Rod ad based on “It Was A Good Day”.
The spot features champion skateboarder Paul Rodriguez Jr. (son of the comedian) having the best day ever, skating around Los Angeles to a soundtrack provided by an ADHD edit of the Ice Cube classic. Eventually his deck rolls off ahead of him and gets snapped in two under the tire of a low rider driven by Ice Cube himself. Cube gives the skater a pissed-off intimidating look, similar to the first glance he shot me at the record store that day, and then drives off. But P-Rod takes it all in stride, probably because he now has a decent story to cap his day off with and besides he’s too stinking rich to worry about losing a skateboard.
I have to admit, watching the ad the first few times was euphoric. Hot nostalgia flooded through my veins, as potent and warm as William Burroughs’ junk (no boho).
The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
The junk merchants at Nike have this down to a science. Rodriguez is dressed in what feels like one of Cube’s vintage looks of the early 90s: black pants, the black t-shirt is not quite solid but the Nike logo is so faded it’s practically subliminal, and on the feet – a classic looking pair of black on white Nikes. Of course, Cube was more likely to be found in Chuck Taylors or stalking in big black boots. He even cited his preference for the short-lived Ewings over Air Jordans a couple of times.
Still the beat is there, the solid black wardrobe feels right, sun-drenched LA the backdrop, Ice Cube’s got the sweet ride but snarls anyway, there’s even some coy reference to the police – the mutual enemy of skaters and gangsta rappers – too flatfooted to pursue P.Rod as he flips the script of the original. He didn’t even look in their direction as he ran the intersection.
It all feels pretty cool until you watch the original video and remember that Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” wasn’t really about some kick-ass day. The day singled out was remarkable because for once none of the usual bullshit associated with the terror of life in the hood reared its ugly head. No hassle from carjackers or police, no one killed, the narrator can’t believe he didn’t even have to shoot at somebody.
It was almost subversive that a lucid and humane critique of inner city conditions — a day in the life of the “other America” — became a top 40 hit, an MTV rotation and keg party staple.
Nike has extended versions and bonus scenes galore up on YouTube. In the alternate ending above, Ice Cube is a gangsta with a heart of gold, picking up P. Rod for a ride. This ups the Entourage factor by a thousand. It cuts right before Ari Gold pops up from the backseat and makes them hug it out.
Nike isn’t in the business of highlighting social disparity (and neither is modern-day Ice Cube for that matter). And so the ad’s use of “it was a good day” is stripped of irony and more in congruence with the storyline of every single episode of Entourage. The fact that P. Rod’s swarthy good looks, curly hair and goofy grin evoke Adrian Grenier only adds to that overall effect.
I’m not suggesting that people should be mad about this bit of fluff. It’s just another example of hip-hop’s transformation to lifestyle marketing tool and its astonishing disconnect from the reality it used to represent.
Ice Cube in those days was a Race man and he made Race records. I know Rodriguez is the guy with the sneaker line but I can’t help but ponder how this commercial’s meaning could have changed if Nike had done the same spot with a black kid from the hood as its star.
Theotis Beasley, also of the Nike skateboarding team, does make a cameo appearance. Am I wrong to think they’d be doing more to honor the tradition of this classic song if this were Beasley’s commercial? Not that O’Shea Jackson himself seems to mind.
Three years ago I saw a big hip-hop show in New York City just days after Sean Bell’s murder. The city was buzzing with rage and confusion everywhere except inside the show where the incident wasn’t even mentioned. I said back then that there was “a time when rap was supposed to speak to and speak for the streets”. But shows like that Rock the Bells performance and ads like this one from Nike show how far we’ve come from that. The acts and songs of that era are being used to market to aging hip-hop fans like myself but it is all sound and no fury.
As I keep thinking about that drug known as Nostalgia, it also occurs to me that was the name of the scent Adrian Veidt created in Watchmen. Funny then that Ice Cube marketed himself back then as a real-life Rorschach, hell-bent on never selling out or compromising. That kind of thing resonated well with teens once upon a time.
We are past the point of the history eraser button being pushed. Sometimes I think it’s being pushed every 108 minutes by a sweaty dude in an underground bunker. And who can blame that man? It is a jolly, candy-like button after all.
A wise man told us that too much candy is no good, but I don’t see anybody closing up shop.
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Hysterical as it is to see my tweeted query about Weiss’ list up top without context (I was trying to get Noz to explain why race formed the opinions on the list), I love this post. I’ve been saying to people that the point of music (lately, though for as long as you could buy music, really) is for it to have some sort of anthemic feel, bedroom-sized or club-shaped or whatever. The people who can capture that best are the people who sell best.
Thus, Soulja Boy: The juvenile yammering of “Yahh” and the nonsense confidence of “Turn My Swag On.” Thus, Akon: Faux-thug bravado wrapped in a loverman’s croon. Thus, Weezy: Gifted kid who saw guns and drugs around him and shot himself and drank up rather than picking them up, then told fables about what he didn’t do.
My generation (I’m 19) isn’t listening to music as much as they are hearing it. We discard albums for singles and download stuff that never gets a spin. We buzz about Drake because he’s safe and suburban and a kid from Canada by way of Memphis who’s living out his rapper fantasies that we all have.
Who are our Ice Cubes? K’Naan? Wale in “The Kramer” mode? B.o.B.? Jay Elec? Lupe? Who’s thinking and writing that down and singing it and trying to make music mean something?
It doesn’t help that the old guard’s gone to seed, mostly: Cube’s doing movies. Flav’s spawned the reality culture that has consumed VH1; Snoop hopped on. LL’s on NCIS: Los Angeles starting this fall. 50 makes videos with Internet meme kids. Dre sells headphones.
What does come through (“D.O.A.,” “Hip Hop Is Dead”) sounds like wistful reminiscing from the other side of the hill. And it sounds to me less like they want to turn it into a sea of glass and more like they want to hop back over to where the fun is.
Selling out is underrated: If you want to get paid, get paid. I can’t be mad at that.
I can be mad at a culture of American teens that thinks “I Love College” means something.
Also, I should be clear: As a white kid, duh, I know race is always a factor in hip-hop. I wanted the why and how, not just the party line.
Rockabye,
The inconvenient truth is that CLASS is at the center of Hip-Hop. Not race. But you have to be really into Hip-Hop to understand that. If you are a huge fan of rap music this fact will fly over your head all of the time.
For too long the mainstream media has made Black people synonymous with poverty so that we can’t see the difference any longer.
Hip-Hop was borne from a class struggle that disenfranchised poor folks so badly they had to pull electricity from street lamps to have lights in their homes. That wasn’t just Black folks living in the south Bronx either. Italians, Puerto Ricans and Irish kids all called Mott Haven home at the same time Hip-Hop was birthed.
Sure it was mostly poor Blacks and latinos in the Bronx (and conversely Brooklyn) that started Hip-Hop as an artistic movement but that quickly migrated to their cousins living in Queens and other precincts where the struggle wasn’t as oppressive.
Rafi,
My Ice Cube stannery was equally impressive. He was the anti-hero who was going to show us the way through his rhymes on how to eff the system and still live the life we imagined we deserved. I think when I met him in person and towered over him is when I lost the stan.
I was just listening to the album Fear Of A Black Planet and few months ago when ‘Burn Hollywood, Burn’ roared over the speakers. I had to laugh to myself at what had become of the angry voices on this track. Chuck D, God bless his soul is still angry and pointed, but between Flav, BDK and Cube we have a veritable 3 Stooges.
All this to say that this revisioned video selling the sk8boarder lifestyle and dangerous, carefree, rebellious and musically progressive is fantastic. I remember what this music used to allude to and if we don’t have to remind ourselves of the disenfranchisement of poor folks then maybe that disparity will cease to exist?
“I like Nike, but waitaminnit, the neighborhood supports so put some money in it. Corporations owe, they need to give up the dough, to my town, or else we gotta shut ‘em down.” – Chuck D on ‘Shut ‘Em Down’ FOABP
The inconvenient truth is that CLASS is at the center of Hip-Hop. Not race. But you have to be really into Hip-Hop to understand that. If you are a huge fan of rap music this fact will fly over your head all of the time.
I see you. I’d argue that the essential conflict that birthed much of hip-hop (unless we’re counting Sugarhill co-opting Disco) is urban vs. suburban. Hip-hop in the early and mid-’80s was almost fully a product of its environment, an expression of the frustration with the white, upper- and middle-class culture that was out of reach and foreign to the principal actors of hip-hop in New York, L.A., and the other big cities. It’s not hard to find someone saying hip-hop grew because disco sucked.
And yes, it’s an insidious extension of the black = poor narrative to say that hip-hop produces essentially struggle music from poor black Americans. Hip-hop’s musical component is usually either poor people music or party people music; sometimes, it’s both, but that seems increasingly lost going forward.
The other cultural aspects being less lucrative, they aren’t as converted. You know?
I love this article. I agree 100%. Ice Cube’s The Predator was the first CD I owned. I got it after I saw The Predator video. As a suburban white teenager that album had a very powerful voice. What is lost in the shuffle that you forgot to mention was that the song prematurely ends and goes into the song about the riots (Tear This MF’er Up). So Cube’s message wasn’t all positive. Not in the least bit.
Side note: last week I went down to Clarksdale MS, birthplace of the blues. There I was told that most people want to forget about the blues because the “visions are too dark and remind people of a history they would rather forget”. I would also argue that the raw passion of the blues is unable to be effectively manipulated. Unlike hip-hop.
Great piece.
Lance Mountain also makes a cameo as one of the cops.
I enjoyed reading your article, but I can’t agree with that “The good old days …” nostalgia.
“Ice Cube in those days was a Race man and he made Race records”.
No, at THAT time, Ice Cube was a pop star and he made hit records.
Also, how about all those St. Ides commercials Ice Cube did? And that was even before the Predator came out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELxJfRamYUY
I don’t want to start a race debate, but that kid doesn’t really look “white” to me, except if we consider latinos “white” too. Plus, from what I get, this looks more like an East LA area he is skateboarding in. Now, East LA isn’t exactly that fancy and Paul grew up in the Valley, so he’s not exactly a Beverly Hills kid either.
The other issues you raise..I mean, it’s an ad and Nike wanted to sell a product and honestly, I never digged skateboarding, but I wanted to buy a skateboard after watching that.
It might be sad, I don’t know, but this is just reality, it’s just a great commercial, just as the Spike Lee MJ ads were great, or MJ and Bird doing Horse over McDonald’s.
The Sean Bell issue is a different thing to me…remember Hip Hop after Rodney King, remember Hip Hop after Sean Bell..that’s the true definition of selling out and that was the point Hip Hop kind of died. Or when you see the kids of rappers throwing ridiculous sweet-16 birthday parties on MTV…that’s actually really really sad.
But the above…well, they try to sell. Can we really blame them for making a/the perfect commercial? I can’t..I just keep watching it over and over again.
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