Welcome to the blog
The name dunk ball comes from weekends spent playing basketball.
When the town shuts down at 8 p.m. and all you have to do is hang out with your friends playing basketball or driving around listening to hip hop and R&B while pondering what to do and at the end of the night you decide to spend the night driving around and listen to hip hop and R&B until you run out of gas, and then you jump the fence of a local public elementary school and play ball.
Basketball and hip hop provided entertainment, created dreams, hope, and got me through difficult times. They gave me a reason to visit the bookstore and buy Slam magazine and The Source. Basketball was the only reason I read during my teenage years. I learned about Italian basketball and Italian life by reading I’ll Basket D’ Italia by Jim Patton in my independent reading class. One of the commonalities of hip hop and basketball is the ability to use your imagination. Listen to lyrics that paint a story or to count down and hit a game-winning shot, both provided an escape. Escape from trouble, poverty, and pain. Hip hop and basketball created a thirst for knowledge. Basketball created discipline. Hip hop exposed you to art and wordplay.
There is a deep love for basketball when the first NBA game that you attended in your life was in the 1991-1992 basketball season, and the Phoenix Suns are playing in Los Angeles against the Clippers. My fondest memory is Stanley Roberts dunking on Charles Barkley. When the game ended, I bought a red Clippers hat. When I got home, I took out a black sharpie and wrote Ron Harper #4 and Lloyd Vaught #35 under the bill of the hat. Later that year, Los Angeles was burning, and the Clippers had to play game 4 in Anaheim against the Utah Jazz. When your hero-besides MJ-is Ron Harper because he overcame a speech impediment and you are the only kid wearing a red Clippers hat in your Junior High, you genuinely love basketball.
1992 impacted my life in a significant way. In 1992 we met Bishop and “Q” in the film JUICE. Bishop was played by Tupac, and Omar Epps played “Q.” Playing Bishop shaped Tupac’s life. Tupac gave Bishop that deadly stare that represented his psychosis, “you know what, I am crazy. But you know what else, I don’t give a fuck.” Tupac developed 2pac, the persona that he would play in the hip hop world.
The evolution of Tupac is evident when you consider that in 1991 Tupac makes an appearance as one of Shock G’s dancers in the Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, John Candy and Dan Aykroyd film NOTHING BUT TROUBLE. A year later, he is playing Bishop. In 1994 he played Birdie in Above the Rim, and the Tupac to 2pac evolution is complete.
Whenever I see the footage of 2pac stomping Orlando Anderson in Las Vegas, I see Bishop from Juice. Like everyone, I fell in love with 2pac’s music. To this day, I remember where I was when I heard of his passing. I was at home, playing video games and listening to Theo from 92.3 the beat. I recall his deep silky voice as he delivered the news. I went to my nightstand, where I had a copy of the VIBE jailhouse magazine with Tupac on the cover wearing glasses. I kept reading the cover, “This is my last interview. If I get killed, I want people to have the real story.” I was distraught. I loaded both of the All EYEZ ON ME cd’s on my CD player and played them on repeat until I fell asleep.
Artists and entertainment shape our lives. Hip hop and basketball are art. There is an aesthetic beauty to a slow-motion replay of Michael Jordan jumping from one side of the paint, gliding under the hoop, twirling his body, and releasing the ball on the other side as it kisses the glass and drops in caressing the net. That beauty inspires you. Makes you pick up a basketball and duplicate that art form.
Hip hop is magnetic. Hip hop is a fusion of poetry, jazz, Dj’s and MC’s. Geniuses are creating art that will mark moments in our life.
Art becomes the soundtrack of our lives. Art that evolves and has its unique flavor depending on the region where it’s practiced. Its magnetism makes your body react. It generates a sensation in the depths of your belly. In your soul. In your heart. It makes you print out lyrics and study the relationship between the cadence of the songs and the break of the beat and how that rhythm is maintained and broken and recaptured.
The art of storytelling. A spoken word that’s slowed down and sped up to the point where you can’t keep up because you don’t have Busta Rhymes lung capacity.
The art of storytelling in film and literature. Art is in politics, religion and culture.
The art of parenthood and the struggle to not make the mistakes your parents maket while knowing that you will make mistakes of your own.
I dedicate this blog to the art of hip hop, basketball, culture, politics and parenthood. I dedicate this blog to the ever expanding canvas that is our lives. Basketball and hip hop opened the door, provided guidence and life lessons and we don’t stop with basketball and hip hop.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you will share your love of art with me as I will with you.
-Eutimio Ras