Courtside of every game when the camera goes by, it's almost like you have to have some sort of heat shield from all the ice blinging into the camera. So now the moment that we're in with basketball and hip hop, you got James Harden a little baby hanging out in Paris last summer. That's unbelievable to think that these things actually happened. They photoshopped him right off of his arm. Brad, they literally the NBA literally erased Allen Iverson's tattoos from the cover of their magazine. Again, mainstream America back in the 90s even. Of this kind of cultural evolution, right? The idea of wait a minute, these guys are wearing big white t-shirts and sneakers and giant jeans like wait a minute. Yeah, I'm reminded, Jesse, when I was growing up, like the NBA was terrified.
Wait, wait, so you're saying that back then you weren't getting invited to fashion a week like all these guys are now getting invited, I was barred from numerous parties because I had sneakers on. But it wasn't always like that and hip hop came from an outcast position and was not accepted and when I grew up, people said it wasn't even music. It's all very, very obvious what that looks like hip hop has very clearly been so globally commercialized by now and because basketball at the same time has been certified as globally cool. Yeah, this image of like living inside of a music video and what the soundtrack is and what the visuals are, Jesse. So basketball becomes what you're doing while hip hop is happening all around. Man, that memory hits so hard for me too because I have a similar one and this had to be about 82, maybe 83 and the basketball court outside my projects and could keep seeing New York, one evening I went over there and there was guys with turntables and microphones and they were saying something and I was like what is this but I love it I need this and that was hip hop. The first time I heard Nas illmatic, I was playing on the basketball court at PS 11 park, and I heard the whole album a to Z while I was playing three on three, and when I went home, I was like, I gotta go get $10 and get the tape. You know, the first time I heard illmatic, which to me is the greatest hip hop album of all time. So when you're on the basketball court, you know, the guys would be parked in front of the basketball court by the fence, so whatever, blasting hip hop. What sky is saying is that's where the linkage between the game of basketball and hip hop. But in Brooklyn and Harlem and The Bronx, you got a bunch of projects or a bunch of brownstones and so everything is basketball. If you go to queens, you might get that because there's more space because it's houses and everything is kind of spread out. There's no baseball diamonds, right? Because there's no space, especially in Brooklyn. As the great busta rhymes said, hold up, we bring it back come for wine because there is not a baseball diamond in the Evansville projects. Hold on, Jesse, because this is kind of incredible, right? I mean, I imagine it's a special thing for someone like sky zo to grow up playing baseball really close to the actual field where Jackie Robinson integrated the sport. And so everybody just calls it EF for ebbets feel. So Pablo, you know how we do around the way we gotta make abbreviations and whatnot. So when you go in the front, there's a huge sign that says ebbets field and then there's a diamond and it says EF, but it's a shape of a diamond, which is obviously a baseball diamond.
Began to demolish ebbets field in Brooklyn. As a two ton wrecking ball, painted your resemble a baseball. "23rd, 1960, a brass band played old Lang syne.