Now that’s what I’m talking about! No sooner had I created the challenge then the first blows have been struck. It is about to go down up in this piece as we get all hype williams[ll] for the grand opening of the NIKE iD Design Studio inside of NIKETOWN NYC.
NIKE iD has been the move for me ever since I visited their installation in lower Manhattan. It’s all about creating a shoe for yourself that is as fresh and unique as you are. You would be a maniac to have as many sneakers as I do, but if you are going to have only one pair it should be the pair that represents your steez to the fullest.
My main nigga on the trigger (no T.I.) 40 DIESEL is going in hard with these designs he sends us. From the top to the bottom, 40 DIESEL keeps it realer than most. So when you see a six foot seven offensive lineman rocking a Mighty Healthy fitted and sporting a pair of NIKE iD Air Force 1’s holler at your bulldog.
Olde Gold Air Max ’97
Taking the 97 shoe and shaving 10 years off of it with the colorway. A homage to my favorite hood elixir. Deep Red pearlized panels with gold 3M and metallic gold accents interplays as the beer and the label of the Old English. The dark cinder lining represents for the brown
bag which provides the buffer between the beer and your hand. Now it’s been flipped to the inside to represent the buffer between your feet and the shoe. Topped off with white laces, swoosh and personalization for the white font of the label and the foamy head[ll] of this fine malt beverage.
Remy Martin VSOP Air Max ’97
Decked out in snake skin appointments this model was inspired by the satin finished Remy Martin VSOP bottle considered the entry point for fine cognac. Once again using the Gold 3M highlights and in the airbag lends itself to the gold leaf of the Remy label. Using the appropriately titled cognac colorway I have filled out the rest of the shoe, playing the contents of the bottle against the actual vessel itself.
And lastly, the shoes were ID’ed with the VSOP designation and the year 1724 in accordance with the foundation and standards of The House of Remy Martin.
Let’s be perfectly honest. I need another pair of sneakers like I need a whole in my head. But with the grand opening gala of the new NIKE iD Design Studio inside the NIKETOWN store on 57th Street this Saturday I might just have to celebrate this shit the only way I know how. Please believe the joint is official when your mans-n-them COMBAT JACK is in the building. I’m sure there will be other sneaker fiend celebs that fall through as well. It’s a celebration bitches!
So now you ask me what the big effing deal is about since you can simply individually design and personalize your shoes at NIKEiD.com, and I tell you that the experience is what makes the difference. The NIKEiD Design Studio offers materials and styles that aren’t available online. By installing the design studio inside of their centralized retail outlet they have now democratized the ultimate form of sneaker customization. Anyone can literally walk in off the street and make an appointment to get their kick game right that very same day.
You hear that BYRON CRAWFORD? Even you can become fresh to def. Well, prah’lee not, but if you wanted to be fresh, living in the city of Chingy and Nelson is no longer holding you down.
To sweeten the event, as if, NIKE is also running a sexy little promo over at their FaceBook page.
If you are coming to the event on Saturday make sure to holler at a sneaker fiend when you see him in the streets. I will be checking for all my peoples still living the lifestyle. Nah’mean!?!
When the i.C.’s win, the internets wins. That is our motto. We try to take you in with us whether we win or lose. We won last week when Vh-1 granted us press credentials for their annual Hip-Hop Honors awards show.
Rafi and I both manage respectively popular websites that show the utmost love to Hip-Hop as a cultural artform. We are both Hip-Hop representatives in our own rights. How could we NOT be invited to attend this celebration? Very easily. While I had been invited to access the red carpet and press events at last years awards show I had not been extended an invite to this years’ jumpoff. Could it be that the t.I.’s at Viacom had finally gotten around to reading my scathing diatribes on their programming?
Since I promised Rafi that we would be up in this event I had to scramble to get us some kind of access to the party. I reached out to my last connect at Viacom and she directed me to complete a last minute credential request. The i.C.’s were approved, but only for a three man crew. Back in the days of Ghetto Big Mac and Bodega this would have been acceptable, but ever since the Sundance Film Festival we have grown into a filmmaking production house collective. Basically, I needed another pass for our stalwart editor and occasional cameraman T-Bone [ll].
Up until the day of the event I had not been confirmed for all of us to have access. No matter, we still went ahead and met up on the corner of 34th Street and Eighth Avenue. Caz and T-Bone had conferred on which equipment to bring and they were definitely on point. Rafi came through and brought the energy and the swagger in a sharp pinstriped suit. I rocked a tight-fitting sportsjacket and one of my Oh Word J-Dilla tribute tees. For good luck Rafi and I both sported the iNTERNETS CELEBRITIES Nike Dunks.
After a few minutes of deliberation we were issued press credentials for the entire crew. Raf, Cas, T and me immediately ran down to the red carpet to see what work was left for us to put in. The scene was mad hectic and tons of people were already firmly entrenched on the carpet’s press platform. Shouts go out to Agent B for providing us with the logo for the i.C. microphone flag. i.C. is so wonderfully bootlegg and maybe that is why we are so Hip-Hop. Nobody in the press area had ever heard of the i.C. before then. They will definitely remember us after that day. Kerri Washington will remember that I called her Megan Goode and I will remember that she called me a sweaty, fat man. That was one of the greatest moments of my life. She and Eve might be the single prettiest women that I have ever been within five feet of.
Another adventure of ours for that evening was trying to find the press room that had been set up inside of the venue. After walking through several stairwells and labyrinths we arrived at what we thought was media Nirvana. The press room was stocked with all kinds of free food and beverages. All the free Red Bull drinks you could want. Rafi and I then found the crafts services zone with hot food. Collard greens were dripping from my chin. I was a beast. This right here could have been the end of the line for us but I didn’t want to leave anything on the table, literally or figuratively. If Rafi came all the way down to the city to party, and T was carrying around this gotdamn big ass camera, and Cas was text messaging his lady there was no way I wasn’t gonna try to get us as close to the stage as possible.
We descended into the stairwells again and this time we actually found heaven in the form of the Vh-1 V.I.P. lounge. Free booze and premium hors d’oeurves were set before us. This was where we finally gave ourselves the Team Chea toast. This moment was what I had bathed for earlier that day. I suppose we could have stayed in the VIP lounge and enjoyed the unlimited drinks, but there was still more to see and more to do. We took our final descent onto the floor of the Hammerstein ballroom for the Tribe Called Quest tribute. The performance was one of my favorite all time Hip-Hop moments.
When the i.C.’s win, the internets wins.
You guys won.
Peep the i.C.’s video diary of the 2007 Vh-1 Hip-Hop Honors awards before Viacom does that Illuminati bullshit and makes YouTube disable the video link.
Editor’s note: Average Bro is not your average weblog. There’s insight and witticisms that extend to all kinds of social topics. I love the articles about why ROBERT SYLVESTER isn’t already in jail and what the fuck our kids are listening to in their iPods? I lifted this drop from his site to give you a taste of his flavor[ll].
“SuperManning That Ho!” (aka: Do You Really Know What’s In Your Child’s iPod?!?)
My disdain for ringtone rap music is well documented, so I probably just missed this one simply because I haven’t ever listened to more than 4-5 seconds of Soulja Boy’s ‘Crank Dat’. I guess I just value my brain cells far too much. For those of you familiar with this song this probably won’t be much of a surprise, but I ran across an article this morning that examined the song’s lyrics in depth and I couldn’t believe something so profane is being played over the airwaves.
Peep the lyrics yourself. The hook, which is about the only semi-intelligible thing in the entire song, goes a lil’ somethin’ like this:
Soulja Boy Off In This Ho
Watch Me Crank It
Watch Me Roll
Watch Me Crank Dat Soulja Boy
Then Super Man Dat Ho
Now Watch Me Do
(Crank Dat Soulja Boy)
Now Watch Me yua!
(Crank Dat Soulja Boy)
Now Watch Me yua!
If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what the heck “SuperManning That Ho” entails. A quick Google of this term pulled up this very crude entry in the Urban Dictionary*. AverageBro.com is for the chill’ren, so I’m not going to bother cut and pasting the definition of “SuperManning That Ho” on this family friendly site. Let’s just say it makes the term “Skeet Skeet” sound like a nursery rhyme by comparison.
*Editor’s note: DP Dot Com is also for the children, but we believe that the children should be properly informed about everything. The Urban Dictionary quoth: “When you’re doing a girl doggy style, pull out, and cum on her back/ass. When she tells you to wipe it off, you pretend to, and when she wakes up, she has the bed sheets stuck to her back like supermans cape.”
Last week, I posted a clip of an obviously talented young kid stepping to the song “Wipe Me Down”. When a person purporting to be the child’s father visited the site, he left a scathing comment that set off a flurry of replies; many questioned me for being so critical, and some questioned the father’s sanity for posting a video of his kid dancing to a strip club anthem.
I have yet to hear back from the father, but if he’d like me to modify the post, I’d be more than willing. Chances are this clip was probably a family joke that someone irresponsibly got ahold of and threw on Youtube for the whole world (13,000 viewers and counting in just one week) to gawk at. I refuse to believe any rational and sane father would put his kid out there like that. For playing my part in such rank exploitation of a minor, I sincerely apologize. Hit me up if you want me to edit the post, but I’d suggest you get it off the rest of the internet too while you’re at it.
This whole thing has me wondering if people, especially parents, really know what these kids nowadays are listening to. If so, does it really matter anyway? My nephew, much to my chagrin, knows the dance as well as all the words to “Soulja Boy”. While I cry inside everytime I see him perform this, he’s a pretty sheltered 11-year old, so I wonder how much the whole concept of “SuperManning That Ho” goes right over his head. I don’t really worry about him turning out bad, after all, he is a straight-A private school student from a supportive two-parent household. Kinda, sorta… well, heck, just like I was as a tween’ listening to Too Short and the Too Live Crew, who were hardly Disney-friendly themselves. Judging by the daily readership here at AB.com, I’d say I turned out relatively well, so what’s to say he won’t?
Think about it. Are today’s “Aunt Jackie” and “Ay Bay Bay” really much worse than yesterdays “The Rappin’ Duke” and “The Pee Wee Herman“. Then again, those artists weren’t getting 6,500 spins a week, but hey, what do I know?
I guess rap lyrics, despite how profane, only can truly taint a certain impressionable segment of the population. And hey let’s face, that segment of the population is already eff’ed the eff’ up anyway. Hurricane Chris is merely proverbial icing on the shitcake of life for these kids. Cleaning up (c)rap music won’t improve their fortunes any more than firing Don Imus improved the fortunes of black women. Societal problems are far more complex to trivialize and pin on something so superficial as the words of an 18 year old. So while I sure as hell won’t be letting my son listen to “SuperManning That Ho” (yes, I am reusing that phrase on purpose) anytime soon, it’s probably not fair of me to judge others just because they allow their kids to.
Live and let live. I guess you could say this was an epiphany of sorts.
Reality is, bad parenting and poor education pose far bigger threats to our community than Soulja Boy’s ‘Crank Dat’. Maybe that’s why as much as BET bugs me, I’d much rather use my limited time and energy tutoring, mentoring, and coaching our next generation of young leaders than getting all in a tizzy over 106th and Park.
Then again, this is just one black man’s opinion. And you know what they say about those.
Bonus Beats: For the unfamiliar, here’s the music video to Soulja Boy’s song, thankfully minus a graphic demonstration of ‘SuperManning That Ho’.
And they say Hip-Hop Is Dead. I’d say “Hip-Hop is a rotting, stank, decomposed corpse of it’s former self” is probably a bit more accurate.
Shouts to my peoples Rios and Air Maxwell from the Dr.Jays on Fordham Road. I made a quick stop through there a few weeks ago to copp those Air Max 90 360 hybrids with the flash pink laces and these folks showed me some love on a few other I.T.’s, just on the strength that they read this blog. Being an iNternets Celebrity in the streets has its privileges.
Dr.Jays is one of NYC’s classic sneaker ansd streetwear spots. They don’t carry the ultra-trendy streetwear labels (read: ghey), but they do sell some of that ghetto shit that no self-respecting Black dude would ever wear. You know that shit that is only popular within the New York City housing projects. I don’t care where you reside though. You just need to have a new pair of kicks on your feet if you want to get my respect.
Dr.Jays is where you can copp that crisp new flavor.
I fucks with this spot for a bunch of reasons…
1) Several locations all around NYC – Fulton Street, Fordham Road, Jamaica Avenue AND 34th Street
3) Dr.Jays has a Nike Urban account and this means exclusive shit.
4) These niggas got every possible color of Yankees fitted.
I copped the 3M Dunks because they are fireworks, and way cheaper than anywhere else I have seen them.
Dr.Jays carries a brand called Lot29 ansd they are doing some ridiculous shit right now with DC Comics heroes and villains. I am not fucking with any of this Lot29 shoit because they are bastardizing the DC Comics brand. This is the type of campy, cartoonish n onsense that you might be able to get away with when you use Bugs Bunny, but even still it’s obvious to me that whoever was contracted to design this line had no feel for comics or how to represent them. The line totally looks and feels like clownshoes.
Memo to DC Comics… Make it stop!
Now here is how it should be done. Marvel Comics has the best designers working on their branded apparel. Their shit is just tougher than leather. I copped two(2) of these Spider-Man tees so I could keep one on ice. They had a Punisher joint and a Venom tee, but Spider-Man is the GOAT of the Marvel franchise and I can’t wait to sport my tee for the premiere of SM 4.
