by Scoop Jackson

“I don’t know/What this world’s gonna do/But I know one thing/That this is the life of me…”
Could it be his baggy shorts or his tat’d neck that makes him different than y’all? Or is that what made him King? There is a soundtrack to this man’s life. It’s concrete driven, on 22s. You’ve heard it before, every time y’all sneak into Rucker Park, hoping to see Bad Boy play Loud Records or maybe get a glimpse of Hot Sauce vs. Headache. You hear Escalades and Navis glide by. Jadakiss, Cormega or Fabolous. You can’t deny it. Then you escape before it gets black, back up to the Hamptons to tell your friends. You get hooked on the bezels and the Bentleys. The Grant Hill jersey is an afterthought now, Mitchell & Ness has your new order: PHILA 3. But you still don’t know what “Cru Thik” means. Still, Moms and Pops are getting concerned. They’re noticing changes. It’s too late. Guess who’s coming to dinner?


“E’rybody got a story/We all ghetto, B/Here’s mine/See I was born in sewage…”
It would be nice to sit here and write that we told you so, America. Of course, that would be condescending, unethical…but f**k it, we did. We did it in ’96, making him the first non-NBA player to ever bless the cover of this magazine; giving him his first national media cover, period. We did it again in ’97, right after he won the Rookie Game MVP and the NBA put a “gag order” on his media privileges. 1998. 1999. Now, Cover Five. We exalted him to Jay-Z status, simply because, unlike the rest of America, there was no reasonable doubt in our minds that he was going to become a one-man dynasty like no other. What we didn’t know was that the rest of the country would see past the glaciers of ice and give AI love. He suddenly began poppin’ up on the covers of magazines that had previously wanted nothing to do with him, or, if they did, called him “basketball’s Mike Tyson.” All of a sudden his “image” wasn’t threatening, it was “marketable.” They started to accept him as he was. They knew there was money to be made off him. They started listening to the soundtrack.


Pardeep Posted: Sep.9 at 10:50 pm
One of the best articles ever. AI stayed real and did it his way and became mainstream his way and yes these are the reason racist pricks hate. Wayno probably does not know what is going on when he reads those rap lyrics. 

- - 崩溃了。
后面的评论都在纠结 艾的伟大是因为他的技术还是因为他的发型，与规则做斗争之类。甚至到种族。
就不贴了- -