‘Shawty Get Loose’…and don’t come back

The 55-year-old tournament adopted as its theme song this year “Shawty Get Loose” by Lil Mama, a booty-shaking singer of barely discernible talent in tight leather pants.

Why, oh why would the tradition-bound, staid ACC adopt a hootchy song as its theme song?

Mark the calendars, lock up the kids, and throw away conventional wisdom…because StateFansNation is going to quote the insufferable Barry Saunders today without criticizing him despite the manner at which criticism so easily flows.

Saunders surprised even his own family today when he actually got one right today with his article regarding the Raycom’s use of Lil Mama’s “Shawty get loose”.

If you don’t live in the region and therefore had the pleasure of watching the ACC Tournament on ESPN as opposed to Raycom, then you didn’t see the jaw-dropping integration of ‘Shawty get loose’ in Raycom’s television coverage. I attended most of the tournament in person, but during a game that I chose to watch at home in High Definition – see, Raycom, ACC Basketball CAN be televised in HD without breaking some law or breaking your bank account – my wife was walking through the room and asked me what I was watching/listening? Honestly, I couldn’t answer.

But, as the game progressed I had the exact same feeling that Saunders described the next time I heard Mike Hogewood open his mouth:

Few things are funnier or more disturbing, though, than hearing ACC frontman Mike Hogewood say “Shawty Get Loose” when urging fans to buy the song’s ring tones “as heard on BET.”

Lastly, I give Saunders credit for connecting the obvious points to the origin of this misfit marriage – Bob Johnson. Well, that’s at least how I explained this trash to my wife this weekend when she asked what was going on.

An ACC employee said Raycom, not the ACC, was responsible for the telecasts’ music. I was unable to reach anyone at Raycom’s Charlotte office.

Here’s all you need to know, though. The tournament was held at Bobcats Arena, named for and owned by Robert “Bobcat” Johnson. Johnson, you recall, made billions from BET, glorifying the most despicable images of black people.

Under Bobcat, BET reportedly stood for Booties Every Time, and programming consisted mainly of hootchy mamas in thongs and high heels.

Please allow me to take you back to just the seventh entry ever posted on this blog in November of 2004.

Lord have mercy, how could I have forgotten how Fox Sports has chosen to market Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball to the masses? Oh, forgive me….it is not ACC Basketball on Fox…..it is Sunday Night “Hoops” – an appropriate shortcut and slang for the product that Fox tries to package to the rest of the country — “Hoops” as opposed to the artful, tradition-rich game of “Basketball.” At least it is accurate.

If you missed the opening of the 30-minute pregame show, then you missed an “artist” whose mother lost her dictionary and forgot the last name of her baby’s daddy when “Fabolus” performed a rap titled, “Tit 4 Tat.”

“Tit 4 Tat” What the hell is that? and what does it “movin like dis and movin like dat” have to do with Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball?

For the record….I am 33 years old, speak what I consider acceptable English, and can’t friggin stand the continued “thugadization” of ACC Basketball by Fox Sports. I also am employed, don’t have attention deficit disorder and actually have the ability to remember what is marketed to me on television. I can’t imagine that I am that much in the minority of the demographic that both watches ACC Basketball and whom marketers want to reach. Have I gotten so far out of the mainstream that other people of my age and my background like this junk?

My opinion of this kind of crap hasn’t changed over the years. The ‘logic’ of the ACC promoting its product to a market of people that Saunders describes as, “hip-hoppers with pants hanging off their butts and Goths with black fingernails and colored mohawks” is beyond me. I think someone needs to do a little research to figure out their market and to figure out who can afford to pay for the products that are advertised during the games.

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07-08 Basketball Media

105 Responses to ‘Shawty Get Loose’…and don’t come back

  1. Noah 03/18/2008 at 8:24 AM #

    These kids today (shaking fist).

    You know, I listen to the Ramones and the Clash and Talking Heads and the Grateful Dead. So I’m all about listening to weird looking freaks that pissed mom and dad off. Hell, that was half of the appeal.

    But that music was GOOD! This crap sucks! 🙂

    But seriously, I’m fine with the whipper-snappers having their own music. I’m supposed to hate it. And I’m supposed to tell those punks to turn it down and all of that good stuff.

    But ***damn it, don’t put that **** on during the ****ing ACC tournament? What the **** is wrong with these people? Can’t they make their money by doing something more honest and tasetful? Like selling their daughters into white slavery rings or by operating a meth lab in their backyard?

    As I said during the tournament in the game entries…I want to watch basketball. If I wanted to watch MTV (or BET), I’d shoot myself. My wife pointed out that this comment showed my true age. Videos on MTV…how 20th century!

  2. BoKnowsNCS71 03/18/2008 at 8:35 AM #

    I’m no prude either but when you read the lyrics at

    http://www.metrolyrics.com/shawty-get-loose-lyrics-lil-mama.html

    you get eloquence like

    “Its the reason why I spit it
    How I spit
    When I spit its like mucus
    Gotta get rid of it”

    I’m not going to guess what that refers to other than the way the media panders to Duke and UNC — thought they swallow.

  3. packgrad93 03/18/2008 at 8:36 AM #

    the youth is going hip-hop theese days. Checkout Disney channel if you don’t believe me. Mant shows, movies & song videos are geared towards hip-hop/slang even at very young ages.

    SFN: So? That is as relevant as me telling you that Eliot Spitzer was Client #9.

  4. BoKnowsNCS71 03/18/2008 at 8:38 AM #

    Maybe we can get the ACC to play the Cornhole song during football games.

  5. Girlfriend in a Coma 03/18/2008 at 8:41 AM #

    They played Ramones before football games last year. It floored me.

  6. dubpack 03/18/2008 at 8:45 AM #

    I’ll be 25 years old this year, and I feel the same about this as all of yall. I’m sick and tired of basketball being portrayed as some gangsta past time

  7. Rick 03/18/2008 at 8:47 AM #

    FOr the love of all that is holy do not click on that moron’s link. I do not want to increase his readership. Just because he got one thing right does not erase all of the racist anti-NCSU crap he has spewed through out the years.

    He is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with journalism and a poster child for why newspapers are a dying breed.

  8. Cardiff Giant 03/18/2008 at 8:50 AM #

    This is truly the case of the stopped clock being right, and is he ever.

    I am completely disgusted at this hip-hop crap saturating our popular culture.

  9. Noah 03/18/2008 at 8:55 AM #

    I have a friend who teaches music who claims that the future of popular music is fairly bleak.

    Rock emerged from the swing/jazz frontier and if you’ve ever tried to play jazz, you know that you have some serious chops to do it well. The first rock musicians were all seriously talented guys. If you’ve ever seen the documentary, “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” you know that the backing group on those Motown hits (the Funk Brothers) were great musicians.

    As rock progressed along the path, it gradually became almost outsider art. It didn’t require formal training. Plenty of rock musicians can’t read sheet music and couldn’t tell you a thing about music theory.

    The great thing about rock is that you only need to know three chords. Punk doesn’t even require you to do that. But that means you’re limited. You are pretty much a one-trick pony and you can never really evolve into anything else.

    Rap and hip-hop require even less from it’s “artists.” They’ve taken incredibly sophomoric lyrics and just laid them down over a barely-hidden George Clinton lick and shoved it down the throats of an idiotic audience.

    I do have to laugh at the evolution of popular music lyrics.

    early 1950s
    I can’t wait to take you to the sock-hop, Betty Jane! (and **** you afterwards when no one is looking)

    late 1950s
    I can’t wait to **** you when no one is looking, Betty!

    early 1960s
    I can’t wait to **** you, Betty!

    late 1960s
    It would be so groovy to **** you, Mountain Girl!

    early 1970s
    It would be so groovy to **** you, Mountain Girl! And all of your friends too!

    late 1970s
    It would be great to **** you, Roller Girl, just let me finish my eight-ball!

    early 1980s
    Oh, ****, you’re pregnant? And you’ve got AIDS? What?

    late 1980s
    I can’t wait to try on this condom!

    early 1990s
    I can’t wait to have your abortion! (stolen from “Fight Club”)

    late 1990s
    Girl, I’m going to ****ing **** you while your **** mama licks my **** and sucks my dogs **** and then I’m ****ing going to **** you in the **** while I **** your dead grandmother.

    early 00s
    **** *** ****ing **** *** **** ****ed **** in **** *** ****ing ****er.

  10. Noah 03/18/2008 at 9:00 AM #

    BTW, I’m perfectly willing to admit that last post had nothing to do with the ACC tournament or Barry Saunders….just sort of riffing on popular music in general.

    It’s not just rap. As someone who thinks that country music was put here by god to punish me for my sins, I’m not happy with LOTS of sports programming.

  11. BoKnowsNCS71 03/18/2008 at 9:02 AM #

    I vote for the cornhole song– after all it was done in Carter Finley by State students. lol

  12. DRW 03/18/2008 at 9:07 AM #

    We’re a long way from ‘Sail with the Pilot”, aren’t we?

  13. RAWFS 03/18/2008 at 9:13 AM #

    They played Ramones before football games last year. It floored me.

    Lord knows I repeatedly said to myself that “I wanna be sedated” during a lot of the football games last year.

    I am completely disgusted at this hip-hop crap saturating our popular culture.

    I worry too because of the messages it sends. I preferred stinking hippies singing songs about peace and love because at least their tunes were somewhat positive even if they were dangerously misinformed about what the world was really all about. The new stuff is all about violent hedonism and selfishness in my opinion and it sets the tone for a society that is running amok.

    But then again, we’re all becoming our parents. 🙂 Worst of all, many of us have moved out of the all-hallowed 25-34 demographic that seems to hold sway over these matters. They hated our music and we hate our kids music. I well remember my grandfather saying that he thought that my favorite stuff was “nothing but noise” and that my entire generation deserved the penitentiary for our malfeasant “taste” in music. I laughed then and the kids are laughing at us now.

    Thing is, I thought that the Lil Kim “song” was putrid even for rap music. I am by far no affacianado of the genre and couldn’t tell you the difference between Lil Kim and Lil Eve, but I do know good music when I hear it and that wasn’t it.

    Seeing her on my TV gave me a chance to switch quickly to catch other scores or to do something like go to the Casa De Pepe before tipoff.

  14. Girlfriend in a Coma 03/18/2008 at 9:16 AM #

    “Rap” is short for “crap.”

  15. Noah 03/18/2008 at 9:20 AM #

    If you’ll indulge me one more time…something along the lines of RAWFS’ post, this is from an entry on the birth of jazz:

    “Begun in the honky-tonks and brothels of old New Orleans, American’s indigenous musical form has thrived despite condemnation by a variety of critics. The Rev. Richard Yarrow of the Illinois Vigilance Association, for example, warned in a report published on Jan. 21, 1923, that “moral disaster is coming to hundreds of American girls through the nerve-irritating, sex-inciting music of jazz orchestras. In Chicago alone, the association’s representatives have traced the fall of a thousand girls in the last two years to jazz music.”

    “Amid the distracting notes of the saxophone and the weird beat of the tom-tom was witnessed conduct not hitherto seen outside the old red-light district. Couples on the floor gave way to almost every form of indecency. Dancers violently threw their arms about each other, frequently assuming immoral postures.”

    Bandleader John Philip Sousa agreed, saying, “Jazz is prostituted music and the sooner we get rid of the stuff, the better for our boys and girls.”

    Twas ever thus.

  16. RAWFS 03/18/2008 at 9:28 AM #

    Noah, you’re right, and my dislike of rap is almost certainly a function of my age. But damnit, music was better back then because you had to actually play an instrument as opposed to remix other stuff on a computer! 😉

    In other news, Billy Packer has gotten his own entry on Dickopedia.

  17. BoKnowsNCS71 03/18/2008 at 9:32 AM #

    Trouble, oh we got trouble,
    Right here in River City! .
    We’ve surely got trouble!
    Right here in River City,
    Right here!
    Gotta figger out a way
    To keep the young ones moral after school!
    Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble…

  18. PacknSack 03/18/2008 at 9:42 AM #

    I never made the link to BET. Well played. I did crack up every time Hogewood or Steve Martin said “Shawty Get Loose.”

    I also noticed that in the part they played during highlights, it never played lyrics by the actual singer. Just the sample and the backup stuff. But that’s neither here nor there.

    It was just another misguided attempt to connect with the youth of today.

  19. Noah 03/18/2008 at 9:42 AM #

    Good point. And it actually is part of a larger picture.

    Fox Sports has let it be known that their entire package is basically there as a giant billboard for the rest of their broadcasting package.

    They told major league baseball they didn’t really give a damn about the games at all. They just thought it was a great place to run ads for crap like American Idol.

    I was disappointed that baseball didn’t say, “Great. NEXT!” when courting the networks.

    If you’re the ACC or MLB or the NFL, you have to take the sanctity of your game seriously. There’s nothing more important to the NFL commissioner or the ACC commissioner than THEIR game. That means that they have to take the presentation of that game fairly seriously.

  20. BoKnowsNCS71 03/18/2008 at 9:54 AM #

    So much for the passe Zombie Nation generation and the We will Rock You generatons.

    I do like the creative football videos done for the Pack usually with a mix of rap and rock/metal/grunge (or whatver category that is today) It really fires up the wolpack in da house.

  21. PacknSack 03/18/2008 at 9:59 AM #

    Let’s not start this ‘sanctity of the game’ nonsense. Fox, nor any other network has changed how the games are played. They’ve just found ways to milk it for every advertising dollar they can so they can still profit despite billion-dollar TV deals.

    The sports entities — MLB, NFL NCAA and even our beloved ACC — are as much to blame for this with their billion-dollar deals from the networks. I am an advocate of the free market, and if someone is willing to pay it, they should take it. But we have to be prepared fr the blowback. The games, howevev, are still the same.

    I have no problem if these advertisements mean that the majority of popular sports are not pay-per-view. Because that is where major athletics are headed.

  22. ADVENTEROO 03/18/2008 at 10:01 AM #

    BoKnowsNCS71….you beat me to the punch…I was thinking about the Music Man when I read the post. Currently (ironically), I am copying the VCR to DVD for a friends birthday bash…

    As long as we are wandering down memory lane….I still think that CTC was the Second Generation Music Man at NCSU…Jimmy V had to be the original…Only Jimmy V’s band sounded like the Boston Pops on July 4, 1976…while CTC’s began to hit more than a FEW sour notes…

    BUT TO KEEP UP THE THOUGHT…

    Yes, we got trouble…with a capital T which don’t rhyme with L or F…but that’s OK…

    Remember my friends, belief in LF is the Devil’s tool…..

    Oh, we got trouble with a capital LF…

    (repeat ad naseium….)

    GO PACK

  23. highstick 03/18/2008 at 10:02 AM #

    The “thug” portrayal goes right along with the ignorance of the rules and the failure of the referees to call the game by the rules.

    My son is a band director and a pretty good jazz trumpet player too. Don’t even get me started on rap cause it ain’t music!

  24. Noah 03/18/2008 at 10:09 AM #

    packnsack – Fox’s bottom line is their most important thing. So that’s what they chase.

    But for a sports league, the integrity of the game is what ALLOWS the league to make money. So they can’t sell that out at the drop of a hat.

    I don’t blame Fox for making as much money as they can. It’s what their shareholders expect them to do.

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