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R.I.P. JMJ

Over twenty years ago RUN-DMC blazed the trail for corporate America’s use of rap music to identify and brand products purposefully. Name dropping luxury items has always been a staple of rap music’s canon, but never before had a corporation made the direct connection to openly recognize the influence. More often than not corporations design their lust for disenfranchised peoples dollars by saying that disenfranchised people aren’t allowed to own their products. This usually brings waves of poor people’s money towards that brand since poor folks want nothing more than to appear NOT poor (see DP’s sneaker collection).

Give Adidas all the credit for hiring Hustle Simmons’ amazing threesome to craft an homage to their footwear that has lasted the test of time. If only a crispy pair of leather Rod Lavers could stay this fresh for this long. What allows the RUN-DMC tribute to remain viable after all of these years is the song’s simple yet sturdy construction. This is where we decide to employ DP Dot Com’s patented rap-ology technology. Let’s study a few of the songs created as homages to different sneaker brands and see if we can determine if someone’s intelligence is directly connected to the footwear they consume.

Rap music is an artform that employs language to describe life in such a way that it resembles a painting, or better yet photography. It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Let’s use that benchmark to grade these songs. If all of the compositions were a thousand words long which one would be written by the college level student and which one would come from the da-dunn da-dunt?

RUN-DMC – ‘My Adidas’
My Adidas remains the gold standard for corporate-sponsored Christmas gift wrap. Succinct and to the point. You know exactly what these dudes are talking about and they don’t waste any words on bullshit. Yes, the brand name is repeated several times and it is a polysyllabic word in itself, but tell me the last time someone used the word “university” in a rap song?!?

TOTAL WORD COUNT – 420
TOTAL POLYSYLLABIC – 27

NELLY featuring the St. Lunatics – ‘Air Force 1’s’
NELLY and his crew of colorful weedcarriers craft a song that more than doubles up the length of the Def Jam classic, but even at over a thousand words their love for Air Force Ones is mostly at the level of elementary school poetry written in Crayola crayons.

TOTAL WORD COUNT – 1060
TOTAL POLYSYLLABIC – 13

SOULJA BOY – ‘(I Got Me Some) Bapes’
After 875 words and not one single polysyllabic word you can discern fairly easily that only retahds are wearing BAPE sneakers. Weep for the future.

TOTAL WORD COUNT – 875
TOTAL POLYSYLLABIC – 0