‘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. MrPlywood 03/18/2008 at 2:08 PM #

    ^ good points haze. Public Enemy was very relevant and intelligent back in the day (before Flava Flav became a parody of himself). Don’t get me started on Kanye West. Or John Tesh elevator music. Or the Masters tournament sleepytime soundtrack. Ack.

    Anyway, what I’ve found is that music of ANY genre, unless chosen carefully, takes me out of the game. TV is bad enough, but I especially notice it at a live event. It annoyed me to no end at the couple of Canes games I’ve attended. Stop in play – BOOM – unrelated music. Loud. It may even be music that I like, but it’s not related to the game, and it’s a complete distraction.

  2. Noah 03/18/2008 at 2:15 PM #

    Johnny Cash transcends musical categorization. So does Willie Nelson. And Patsy Cline. I like Patsy Cline. Okay, the old country stuff isn’t bad.

    BJD – if you like jazz, we should talk. The Ken Burns stuff is a good starting point, but the world of jazz is so immense that it’s very easy to get overwhelmed.

    During the golden era of jazz, the artists were incredibly prolific. Up until Miles Davis brought fusion into the mix, jazz records were pretty cheap to make. An artist would get together his band, rehearse for a little while and then show up and lay down the tracks in a weekend.

    Def Leppard spent something like a year in the studio recording “Pyromania.” Miles Davis spent something like three days recording “Kind of Blue.” John Coltrane recorded “Blue Trane”…in a day. September 15, 1957.

    So, there’s tons and tons and tons of great stuff to go through. You could spend the rest of your life sifting through the great records and never sully your ears with the “good” ones.

  3. RAWFS 03/18/2008 at 2:56 PM #

    It annoyed me to no end at the couple of Canes games I’ve attended. Stop in play – BOOM – unrelated music. Loud. It

    No doubt you will be thrilled when the new sound system is put in this summer.

    I think that the RBC’s PA is pretty darned quiet, considering. Then again, compared to the tin horn Radio Shack speakers hanging from their wires beneath CF’s scoreboard, anything is an improvement.

  4. ThomYorkepack 03/18/2008 at 3:05 PM #

    To hear Mike Hogewood incessantly telling me where I could buy “Lil Mama’s” latest record (as if I’d want to go buy it…) was disturbing to say the least. Not to mention ridiculously absurd.

  5. Noah 03/18/2008 at 3:18 PM #

    You know what would have been completely surreal? If they were trying to move something like Tom Waits or Frank Zappa?

    “And now…here’s Frank Zappa with, ‘Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?'”

  6. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 03/18/2008 at 3:25 PM #

    Frankly the most disgusting music I’ve heard at a sporting event is Thank God I’m a Country Boy played at Canes games. However if I remember correctly more people where pissed at Rock You Lika a Hurricane because of the following enlightened lyrics played at a ‘family’ event:

    My cat is purring
    And scratches my skin
    So what is wrong
    With another sin
    The bitch is hungry
    She needs to tell
    So give her inches
    And feed her well…

    …My body is burning
    It starts to shout
    Desire is coming
    It breaks out loud
    Lust is in cages
    Till storm breaks loose
    Just have to make it
    With someone I choose…

  7. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 03/18/2008 at 3:31 PM #

    “I think that the RBC’s PA is pretty darned quiet, considering. Then again, compared to the tin horn Radio Shack speakers hanging from their wires beneath CF’s scoreboard, anything is an improvement.”

    I feel like all State games should sound like C.A. Dillon’s voice washing over the crowd from the old speakers in Reynolds with cigarette smoke hovering beneath the floor lights. The good old days.

  8. Noah 03/18/2008 at 3:34 PM #

    Rock You Like A Hurricane is off of “Love At First Sting,” I believe. An album that, pre-PMRC, gathered some attention for the cover.

    The Scorpions had several banned covers. They had an album called “Virgin Killer” that had a naked 14-year old girl on it.

    Love At First Sting was mild in comparison. It just had a half-naked woman hugging a man.

  9. RAWFS 03/18/2008 at 3:41 PM #

    tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc – hard to disagree with that.

    As for “Rock You (Like a Hurricane) it’s a classic that has stood the test of time. And it reminds me of some damned good times watching that hockey team.

    Unlike certain other teams, the Canes have at least won a championship and been to the doorstep of another in this century.

    I love NC State with every fiber of my being but sometimes I think that the University itself doesn’t want to win anything, just compete and give lip service to championships.

    When I think of the administration, I think of something my Dad used to mutter — “that ain’t no G-D way to run a F’n Army!”

  10. BJD95 03/18/2008 at 3:57 PM #

    I like Jazz a lot, but the idiot level is probably as far as I can get. Don’t have time or energy for another hobby or obsession. My wife is the real music aficianado, and she exposes me to a sliver of it.

    She found some great old Billie Holliday clips on YouTube. Fascinating stuff.

  11. GAWolf 03/18/2008 at 5:05 PM #

    There’s a bucket load of new, fantastic music out there… you just can’t listen to the radio or watch MTV if you want to hear it. Go to Pour House or Lincoln Theater or any of your small music venues and you’ll realize pretty quickly that the true musicians are traveling the country/world playing live every night. These idiots who go into the studio, mash out a recording with 20 takes for every line and sell it as “music” are the ultimate impostors. There’s a reason some idiot gets busted lip syncing once every few months. They can’t sing. Period. They can’t play an instrument. They can’t tote a tune in a bucket. Turn off your radio… unless it’s xm radio or syrius and start broadening your horizons. You’ll hear quickly that quality music is alive and well.

  12. whitefang 03/18/2008 at 5:16 PM #

    DRW,
    LMAO! Sail With The Pilot – now that used to MEAN ACC basketball.
    I remember having to learn every word of that song and be able to sing it on demand as a frat pledge – even with buckets of ice water being thrown on you (symbolizing of course the sailing ship). Of course in those days 2 things were different – 1. you could still haze the crap out of a pledge and not go to jail. 2. NC State had a basketball program that was a factor.
    Do you think todays pledges are learning “Swanty Get Loose” what ever the **** that means?
    I guess all us old guys just sit around and think about how things were “back in the day”.

  13. b 03/18/2008 at 5:19 PM #

    I love music, and I love Statefans talking about. Great post.

    I’m a huge Hip-Hop (not rap) fan, and I love all music on a whole. I was offended by the shawty offering for a different reason than most. Hip-hop has offered many tributes to basketball that would have been inifinitely more approriate, and are less repititive and booty shake oriented. Rap more than any other entity is marred by its bad elements while its postive elements go ignored.

    Examples follow for the curious, the first is a Common offering called “High Expectations”, one of my favorite songs, that should be moderately accessible to those of you with rap-o-phobia. It references a lot of playground legends (“the ghost of Manigault haunts me”. Its from an under-appreciated movie called Soul in the Hole, which ESPN has tried to recreate recently.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGqO_NkM4b4
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZKqh171umo
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0yoPVAOJTk

    BJD, Billie Holiday is one of the greatest, and if you were intrigued by her you will probably like Nina Simone. They had different voices, but they used them similarly. Her version of Gershwyn’s “I loves you Porgy” is the most haunting and I think the best.

  14. coy 03/18/2008 at 5:24 PM #

    As unfitting and ridiculously funny as “Shawty Get Loose” was, I wasn’t surprised due to the tournament being held at BET Arena. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of witnessing one in person, the Bobcats halftime shows are basically a truncated version of Showtime at the Apollo. That being said, despite “Bobcat’s” involvement you would think Swofford or someone would have had better judgment than to allow our conference to be represented so poorly. Who knows, maybe the ACC wasn’t even aware of it until after the fact. SURPRISE!

  15. tcthdi-tgsf-twhwtnc 03/18/2008 at 5:34 PM #

    Sail With The Pilot long version

    SWTP short version:

  16. RTPMedic 03/18/2008 at 6:01 PM #

    “…basketball being portrayed as some gangsta past time”

    Is this not the same issue that the NBA has been attempting to address? At one time NBA ball was somewhat of a highly regarded sport (Russell, Baylor, Walton, Dr. J, Nate Archibald, etc) – now it is a collection of street thugs making millions of dollars to play one-on-five basketball.
    What now? Does the ACC think they can make more money by ‘targeting’ the thug audience?
    It was sickening to watch hood music being played as a part of our great tournament. A weekend that, at least around here, was an unofficial holiday when I was growing up. Every Friday of the ACC Touornament found a TV in most classrooms at school or breakrooms at work.

    Anyone remember what music was played last year as the ‘tournament theme song’?

  17. redfred2 03/18/2008 at 7:11 PM #

    I equate rap with the worst kind of hick country music you could ever want listen to, except it’s worse. Both of them are usually “sung” from a loser’s point of view, and the only real difference I see is that the low life redneck usually ends up perpetuating his self-destructive ways with a bottle in his hand, while the thug rapper usually ends up with a gun in his hand, threatening to bus’ a cap in yo ass, just like all the other low lifes in the hood.

    Dumb, dumb, and DUMBER. < If you were sitting at a stoplight, and that “DUMB…DUMB…and DUMBER” was a deep base shaking your rear view mirror, it might even qualify as rap.

  18. Noah 03/18/2008 at 7:14 PM #

    “She found some great old Billie Holliday clips on YouTube. Fascinating stuff.”

    Find the clip of Coltrane and Miles playing “So What?” on YouTube. It’s awesome.

    There’s also a pretty good book called, “How to Listen to Jazz” that I would recommend for anyone who is trying to figure it out.

    There’s a great story in it about Coltrane and Davis chatting. JC is going on about how he never really knew how to stop in his jams. Miles just looked at him and said, “You take the horn out of your mouth.”

    Cracked me up.

  19. b 03/18/2008 at 7:31 PM #

    Miles was once asked what he wanted more than anything else.

    He answered five minutes alone with a white man in a dark alley.

    When asked years later if he wanted to change his answer he said he did. He wanted ten minutes instead of five.

  20. Ed89 03/18/2008 at 9:44 PM #

    The commercialization of college basketball evident because of this thread title is even more evident if you look at the joke of these regional tournament brackets. Everything is about the money….hence UCLA has a effing cakewalk to the Final Four with Duke, Xavier, UConn, and Drake as their top threats. Texas being in Memphis’s bracket, playing in Texas…(Memphis’ national backing is not that strong). Note that if Duke or UCLA don’t come out of the West everyone will be surprised- but the networks will love either, because both have great traditional programs and strong national backing, but neither is THAT strong. Both are BY FAR the weakest top two seeds (Memphis excluded). Who would you rather play — Pitt (4 seed) or Xavier (3 seed)? It’s a money making joke – we all know it, but they should have done a better job of disguised the obvious bias for certain teams — not in the ACC. How do you have a tournament selection committee with NO representative from the top basketball conference in the nation (the ACC)??? If the ACC commissioner had any balls, he woulda raised hell. Mark my word, if UNC ever has a 9-7 ACC record and doesn’t make the dance, we would’ve heard something, but since it was Va Tech, no biggy. Same with Arizona/ASU…Arizona keeps their streak alive. Truthfully, neither should’ve made it. 14 and 12 losses respectively. I’d put my money on Syracuse to beat the $^&% out of either of them.

  21. Noah 03/18/2008 at 10:14 PM #

    Miles Davis was a very difficult man. John Coltrane, from all accounts, was a total sweetheart. But Davis was a very. different. story.

    Bill Graham, the concert promoter who ran the Fillmore East and West, talked in his autobiography about all it took just to get a meeting with Davis.

  22. TTandB74 03/19/2008 at 3:31 AM #

    Basically, Miles was a jerk of a human being to a lot of people, particularly the women in his life. But, God, I love his stuff.

  23. RAWFS 03/19/2008 at 7:19 AM #

    For that matter, Amy Winehouse might be a dreck of a train wreck as a person, but there is no disputing that her album “Back to Black” is a masterpiece.

    In fact, the lyrics to “Mr. and Mrs. Jones” gave my wife and I the perfect word and phrase to describe the basketball team’s efforts this season: “What kind of f__ery is this?”

  24. BoKnowsNCS71 03/19/2008 at 8:04 AM #

    /\

    Wolfpack tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’
    Yes I’ve been red but when I come back you’ll know know know
    I ain’t got the time and if Lee Fowler thinks I’m fine
    He’s tried to make me go to rehab but I won’t go go go

    regards to RAWFS for the tee up. lol

  25. Ismael 03/19/2008 at 8:05 AM #

    At halftime of the ACCT NCstate vs Miami game (otherwise known as the 2008 Death rattle), that’s the first i saw/heard of the “Shawty Get Loose” and Mike Hogewood was talking to Jeff/Jason (whoever) Capel. And man it sounded so bad when Hogewood said something like “Shawty Get Loose – you [Jason] must know all about this stuff… (the millisecond pause of death due to embarrassment of a potentially racially charged statement)…since you are of this generation.

    But yeah, pretty useless song, “artist” and musical genre however, i’d argue that all “music” is pretty useless regardless of how “moved” you are by it. Especially to anyone hyping up “good music” from the 70’s. All the lyrics are implicity as asanine and amoral as rap lyrics; just less direct of course, and maybe a little more proper on the grammar.

    Equal-Opportunity Music Cynic

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