Ron Artest has a new video, but this aint the regular grimy Warier you’ve come to expect. Nope. This is more like his “I Need Love” attempt and is all for the females. I’m not exactly sure what the hook means and am guessing his intent was something more along the lines of “touch me like you’re blind.”
Overall, however, it’s not terrible. As far as where I would rank this in the Artest catalog of crossover hits, it would go above “Georgetown Girl” but not quite as high as “Fever” or “Guardian Angel.” And obviously it doesn’t come close to the classic “Haterz” or the street anthem “Get Lo.” (video via Ball Don’t Lie)
Kobe was on the premiere of The George Lopez Show last night and actually came off as a normal human being. Like, not a guy pretending to act like all the other humans, but, like, an actual person with organic emotions and natural reactions and everything. I mean, relatively.
Much more importantly, however, this interview reminded me of the time Ron Artest interviewed Kobe back before they were teammates. I can’t recall if this was during Ron’s Houston year or if it was when he was still back in Sacramento, nor can I recall if I’ve ever posted it before, but regardless of the logistics, it’s Ron interviewing Kobe so it’s pretty great — even though it is in actuality rather boring and uninformative.
Foul Monday, the flagship artist on Ron Artest’s Tru Warier record label, has a new video for his track “Trucks Lined Up.” Honestly, the beat isn’t that bad and they have a nice, 90s Queensbridge aesthetic going with the whole standing in front of some SUVs thing and rhyming into the camera. I feel like Mobb Deep did that in like half the videos off their first two albums.
Meanwhile, this combined with the ongoing feelings of triumph resonating throughout mainstream hip hop since the release of Only Built for Cuban Linx II (which is amazing) and Blueprint 3 (which is pretty hot) last week has me reminiscing about a simpler, bygone time when Ron Artest was appearing in rap videos without holding a mic. Along with St. John’s University teammate Reggie Jesse, Tru Warier made his MTV debut in fellow QB native Nas’ 1999 video for the DJ Premier-blessed trunk rattler “Nas Is Like.” (Artest pops up at 1:26 in the below video.)
Little did we know at the time, but I think it’s now pretty obvious that Esco was describing Ron with the whole “Iron Mike/Messiah-type” line.
You know what Ron’s like. You watch him on League Pass every night.
Since I’m sort of a dick I forgot to mention that the hiatus round these parts was due to my vacation last week rather than the fact that I have gone into mourning over the death of Michael Jackson. But unlike me, Ron Artest was pretty shaken up by the whole thing and, fortunately for us, recorded a song about his feelings on the matter. It’s deep. And classic. Classically deep. (It’s the YouTube at the bottom.)
Best line: “Even though I’m always strapped, I’m putting down my mack for Mike Jack — he’s so wavy.”
Also, on a non-Michael Jack note, Shoals wrote a pretty good piece on the existential tip about Tru Warier and Kobe playing together. It’s worth your time.
UPDATE: God I love this guy.
Ron is now taking his Michael Jackson love to the subsequent level by wearing jersey number 37 in Los Angeles to honor the amount of weeks Thriller was #1 on the charts. Splendid. And just so Dwyer and any other uninitiateds know, Ron previously wore the numbers 93 and 96 in Sacto and HTown because they are numerical depictions of “qB” and “qb,”which is an abbreviation for Queensbridge where he grew up.
On the Rockets website they already got you wearing No. 96. Is that going to be your new number?
Yeah. 96 means “QB.” The “9” is the “q” and the “6” is the “b.”
Do all of your previous numbers hold significance for you?
The 93 was “QB” also but it was a lowercase “q” and an uppercase “B.” But now it’s better because it’s two lowercase letters. Lowercase and uppercase don’t really make sense. I always tell my son to begin with the uppercase and end with the lowercase. 15 is my real number. It’s my father’s high school number backwards. 23 I wear for Michael Jordan. 91 I wore for Dennis Rodman and 93 is “qB” and 96 is “qb.”
The more you know.
Throw in the Thriller thing and Ron Artest has now officially spent more time thinking about jersey numbers than any other living NBA player. And Bruce Bowen.
Since I’m sort of a dick I forgot to mention that the hiatus round these parts was due to my vacation last week rather than the fact that I have gone into mourning over the death of Michael Jackson. But unlike me, Ron Artest was pretty shaken up by the whole thing and, fortunately for us, recorded a song about his feelings on the matter. It’s deep. And classic. Classically deep.
Best line: “Even though I’m always strapped, I’m putting down my mack for Mike Jack — he’s so wavy.”
The other day, Jacko and the Sports Guy were discussing the difference between athlete funny and actual funny. The basic idea was that whenever you see guys like Kevin Millar or Nick Swisher talking to teammates in the dugout, they always look like they’re about to fall off the bench laughing. I don’t know too much about either of those guys actual personalities (Sports Guy and Jacko seem to think they probably aren’t really funny although everyone definitely loves Millar), but athlete humor definitely is graded on a a curve. It’s hard to believe that hanging out with Chris Bosh, for instance, would be an uproarious time despite the fact that he once made a really funny YouTube video. I just doubt that he would be contextually hilarious throughout the day. Mildly comical, sure, but not memorably funny.
Some guys in sports, of course, are legitimately funny. Bill and Johnny toss around names like Peyton Manning and Charles Barkley as potential candidates.* I’m not sure about those guys, but I’m fairly certain that Steve Nash is hilarious. I always prefer a dry wit with some self-deprecation to a class-clown persona anyway, but Steve’s understated subtlety has always been great. (Particularly during all these spectacular commercials.) Tim Duncan supposedly has a similar sense of humor. And Yao has definitely killed me with this brand of funny in both The Year of Yao and during the epic press conference he shared with Ron Artest last month. (The truncated 1:42 in this clip really doesn’t do this press conference justice. It was like 15 minutes long in actuality and both Yao and Tru Warier were dropping comedy nuggets throughout. I’ve made several requests to my NBA press contact to get a link to the entire thing with no luck. Some day it happen, however. I’ll letcha know.)
The reason I bring this all up is because the following video where Steve serves as NBA Finals roving reporter for the Late Show with David Letterman is pretty comical. You should watch it.
* (Jacko easily has the best line of the podcast when, after Simmons asks him who might possibly be the least funny athlete of all time, he drops a “Ty Cobb?”) (video via Ball Don’t Lie)
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