Basketball is typically the sport one associates with hip-hop, but don't sleep on the symbiosis it has with football.
After all, we live in an NFL universe, and rap cats play fantasy too...just for a lot more cabbage.
In honor of the "Big Game" on Sunday (nuts to your trademark NFL!) I thought I'd present a few rap stanzas to get you in the right frame of football mind.
Have a happy "Big Game" Sunday. I don't care much in the outcome, but I do care about Totino's pizza rolls, so it's a holiday in my book.
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Generally speaking, the rap game is most associated with the game of basketball. It’s certainly true that hoops and hip-hop go together like Joseph Simmons and Darryl McDaniels, but it also certainly true that DMC will be playing in the NFL Celebrity Flag Football Challenge next Saturday in Arizona and performing at halftime of with the renowned Flutie Brothers Band.
Clearly, professional football is as hard-wired into hip-hop as Kangols and Adidas tracksuits. DMC, should however, lace and tie his sneakers. Torn ACLs are tricky…tricky, tricky, tricky, uhh!
In that spirit of the communal pigskin, here are a selection of football-conscious lyrics to ponder while enjoying Super Bowl XLII.
1). “Be Easy,” Ghostface Killah & Ice Cube, Fishscale:
“Blow your face back, turn you into a ghost, hit you like Kenny hit Casper on the post.”
A true football scholar, Cube goes back to the 1977 double-overtime game between his beloved Oakland Raiders and the Baltimore Colts. Quarterback Kenny Stabler hit tight end Dave Casper on a 42-yard pass that set up a game tying field goal. “The Ghost to the Post,” led to a victory and, 30 years later, enabled Cube to combine the Raiders, a specific up-the-seam pass pattern, a cartoon apparition, a murder and the Fishscale mastermind (presumably a Giants fan) all in one deft lyrical swoop.
2.) “Word of Mouf (Freestyle),” Ludacris featuring 4-Ize, Word of Mouf
“I shoot videos and get knobs slobbed in trailers, then hit stage and break a leg like Lawrence Taylor.”
In an old-school freestyle, Ludacris explains how he maintains his work-life balance by referencing the November 18, 1985 game where Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor turned Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann’s tibia into kindling. Ludacris, however, is not using the ghastly injury in jest, but rather as a metaphorical representation of the theater world’s good luck mantra, to “break a leg.” After all, Ludacris isn’t angry, he’s just shown himself to be relaxed after unwinding in his trailer following a hard day’s work.
3.) “Paisley Darts,” Ghostface Killah featuring Raekwon, Sun God, Trife da God, Method Man & Cappadonna, The Big Doe Rehab
“I grind daily, patriotic like Tom Brady. I’m the bomb baby ‘cuz what I write is beyond crazy.”
Ghostface, clearly a football fanatic, lets protégé Trife da God bring a contemporary flavor to the pigskin lyricism, keeping it simple and precise with an all-American nod to Mr. Touchdown, quarterback Tom Brady. Trife da God wraps it all up in the flag, cleverly mentioning dropping a “bomb” that can be construed as a historical shout-out to Francis Scott Key, a salvo to Brady’s cannon of a right arm, and a testament to his own lunacy on the microphone. It’s worth noting that later in the song, Method Man also shoots 
straight with the self-evident pronouncement, “that’s a given, like football players love white women.”
4.) “Palmdale,” Afroman, The Good Times
“I didn't really care if I passed or failed, I knew I was headed for the NFL,
Until the playoff game, shoulder got hurt. I thought about my future, layin' in the dirt. I can't jump, I can't flinch. Superstar player, ridin' the bench. Graduate from school? Don't make me laugh. I got an F+ in basic math.”
Football is a brutal game, it chews up and spits out fine young men like Afroman, leaving them at the altar of the almighty gridiron. Listen to what Afroman is left with when the Friday night lights are turned off, a busted shoulder, an F+ in math and the psychic toll of going from superstar to the end of the bench. No wonder Afroman had to get high, it’s the 
pain…the pain in his shoulder and the pain in his soul. It’s hip-hop poetry that fans should keep in mind while watching our brave young men of the Giants and Patriots engage in a glorious football battle on Super Bowl Sunday.
(Ice Cube Photo, copyright Tom Sheehan.)
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