2013 Song of the Summer/Video Part of the Summer Retrospective

DATELINE: IBIZA

In the dead of night, a Bell AB-212 descends onto the heliport of David Guetta’s Ibiza compound. A slim, tall African-American lady descends the stairs onto the tarmac. Her hair is styled in a mullet, or some shit.

A few minutes later, another helicopter lands, transporting a Caucasian female with an aggressive platinum blonde hairstyle. She looks like she could use a sandwich.

Neither has any idea why Mr. Guetta has summoned them. A few minutes later, when @mikewillmadeit, French Montana, Future, Nicki Minaj, Flo Rida, Pitbull, and Katy Perry ascend the helipad stairs, everything becomes clear.

Their mission, should they chose to accept it: craft The Song Of the Summer 2013.

This did not happen, but it kinda did…

…as evidenced by the  iPhone-filmed video for an “Ain’t Worried ‘Bout Nothin” remix, featuring Ms. Cyrus, that surfaced in July. However, it kind of boggles my mind that Rhianna and Miley have yet to collaborate on at least one song. It would be the most significant cultural/sociopolitical touchstone of our lifetime–the most relevant artist collaboration since “Ebony and Ivory,” or maybe “Say Say Say.” The latter comparison works better, because they could update the video and do all kinds of slutty turn-of-the-century vaudevillian stuff (via Gillian Darmody/Gretchen Mol, natch). Like, “Fuck, these girls are showing mad ankle. CRAZY!”

Quick, someone get Hype Williams on the horn.

Re: the twerk that launched a thousand thinkpieces and subsequent hype, I will say the following: one gets the vibe that Miley is juicing it too hard.

Like Jamie Thomas at Embarcadero.

Anyway, this summer fell into a much more comfortable routine than the previous. I joined a pool and devised a Gatsby-esque daily schedule to avoid the internet vortex while staying at home most days. I once more ventured to the Outer Banks, where my transition/bowl skating abilities improved infinitesimally. One clear front-runner for Song of the Summer emerged and remained undeniable.  In terms of skate vids, though, something felt a little off. Oh yeah– This Summer’s Transworld Video came out way back in March. The fuck? Regardless,  A bunch of sick internet clips came out, and a couple #physical vid parts. Is it just me or are companies releasing #physical vids way less often? Anyways, here’s this years Song of the Summer/Video Part of the Summer post.

“Blurred Lines”/ Mark Appleyard “Soul Rebel” solo web part

the eternal question

Two cool-ass white dudes! Well, allow me to clarify. Of course, I defy you to find anyone cooler-looking on a skateboard than the technical Circa/medium baggy carpenter jean-era Appleyard. Thicke affirmed his coolness in an interesting-as-fuck interview on Stern at the summer’s apex.  Seemed like a cool-ass white dude. Definitely cooler than Timberlake. I mean, let’s say, hypothetically, the two gentlemen are at a social function. Suddenly someone busts out a gram and flicks it with their finger to break it up ‘n shit. I get the vibe that Thicke would be like “fuck it, oh aight” and Timberlake would be like “that’s not cool, bro” and break the fuck out.

Indeed,  Timberlake radiates both try-hard and cornball vibes, as shown by vocalizing the “cop” part w/Jay-Z during “99 Problems” at their show at Yankee Stadium. Jay-Z himself is only slightly less cornball. Truth be told, I fuxwit “Fuck With Me You Know I Got It” somewhat, but “I don’t pop mollys; I rock Tom Ford” wins the title of Worst Rap Line of The Summer. Like, what’s the connection?  Rhetorically, the shit makes no sense. If he is trying to say “I don’t do ‘crazy’ street drugs but I’m still #relevant cause I rock $5000 suits and $1500 shoes,”  he’s going to have to develop that argument further for it to hold any weight. Furthermore, wearing expensive-as-fuck clothes (or whatever) by no means precludes one from ingesting street drugs cut with baby laxative, Comet® or what have you. I have no empirical data to support this, but there’s gotta be some overlap (see below Venn diagram). I would also bet my paycheck that the rate of MDMA usage amongst people that rock Tom Ford/Yves St Laurent/John Varvados is significantly higher than that of regular folk.

ANYWAY, was there any doubt that this would be the song of the summer? It fucking nailed the three main criteria: 1) ubiquity* 2) lyrical content that appeals to the medulla oblongata and 3)most importantly, when it comes on at the bar, every girl thinks it’s about them. 

By the way, at this point, Pharrell has attained the status of one of the most notable Virginians of all time, right behind Thomas Jefferson and maybe Woodrow Wilson. Has he learned to go frontside yet tho? Maybe he’s scratching tile at Williams Farm and we don’t even know it.

Back to Appleyard; one assumes that this part is the final draft of the pay-per-download Solo Internet Video Part of which he spoke in his March 2012 TSM interview. In this interview, Appleyard mentioned a specific sales target:

50 stacks.

It appears that he will fall short of this lofty goal, because who knows what befell the pay-per-download solo internet video part trend. Regardless, corny Element intro and #musicsupervision aside, it’s Appleyard doing Appleyard things. Dude has reached the upper echelon of Dudes That People Just Want to See Skate alongside Rick, Gino, Julien, Carroll and maybe one or two others. Case in point: the manner in which he dips down and tweaks out that fakie flip switch crooked grind and the assault on that mellow green rail. Yes, I know the ender had Already Been Done in that Massimo x Rhianna part.

“Ain’t Worried About Nothin'” / Lucas Puig “Bon Voyage” part

If Jay-Z logged the summer’s corniest rap line, French Montana had the summer’s best with the following, from that “Work” remix:

I’m drinkin’ lean

 It help me sleep

I mean, who can’t relate to that? Shoutout to total absence of figurative language. And has there ever been a sentiment more tailor-made for a #SOTS than “I ain’t worried about nothin'”? And like all contenders for Best Dude Out, French Mariano continued his streak of dropping a video part on a close-to-yearly basis. In contrast to that Transworld part from 2011, which appeared to be filmed mainly in the LA metro area, his part in the most recent Cliche vid finds him annihillating various #Euro ledge structures and two of the three remaining organic street plazas in the USA. One wonders what he would accomplish in a few hours at #Legislative…

Kurt Vile “Wakin on a Pretty Day”/ Ron Deily “NJ Venture” part

does this exist in t-shirt form?

Back in the #90s, The typical skater’s list of activities when coming home drunk and alone was extremely limited. There was no instagram or fb to lurk. The #elite had dial-up access to AOL or usenet, but for most, the only companions when crawling into that basement apartment in Greenpoint or corner of a room in SF were the memories in the corner of one’s mind; maybe you had a couple #physical photographs of your ex, like a dude in a WWI trench. And of course, you listened to Elliot Smith.

Kurt Vile’s music occupies a similar psychic space, mixed with some Neil Young and shit like that. I first became aware of his work when Eastbound and Down featured one of his songs in the final scene of season 2, but this song appeared on the satellite radio this summer as I was putting in work in the kitchen (literally) and it fucking blew me away. An unlikely #sots candidate for sure, but it captures that vibe of coming home from the pool, staring out the window at the setting sun as that post-swimming sensory deprivation feeling lingers, and preparing dinner while drinking whatever beers are in the fridge. Just ’cause they’re there. ANYWAY, dude has got to be the best songwriter out of Philadelphia since Hall and/or Oates.

About an hour to the east, Ron Deily filmed this part within about a thirty-minute radius of his native Union Beach, NJ. I like video parts in which the dude only skate spots in their neighborhood. Daewon based an entire career on this principle, and I practice it in my daily life. Specifically,  I used to think nothing of driving four hours in one day to go skate DC, but now if I have that much time at my disposal I have no choice but to compartmentalize it. Plus, like, where do you park.

ANYWAY, Zoo is still out there margining leftover #90s brand equity, using the Astor Place cube as a visual touchstone. While Westgate gets all the SOTY mentions, Deily continues to do his thing in a perpetual state of underratedness, approaching East Coast spots with West Coast technicality (long-ass switch tail heelflip out AND switch f/s heel tailslide @ABC ledges). Plus that opening f/s flip comes as close to Carroll’s as just about anyone’s. Moreover, more people should skate to Springsteen. Like, how tight would it be if some company made a promo vid and the only song they used was “Jungleland”–sax solo and all. Also, it’s tight that people still skate the ABC ledges, via #early00snostalgia.

Rihanna – “Right Now” feat. David Guetta/Palace Reebok Loop

who wants to watch my kids so I can go to this?

Hey–I don’t know if you guys heard this, but she allegedly had sex with one of the dudes on the team.

Did Rihanna release any other songs this summer? Anyway, this dude Guetta has been pumping out #sots’s since at least 2009, when he unleased the Questionable of Songs of the Summer, about which I wrote this. “Right Now” is tight because it almost sounds like she’s saying “fuck it up right now” at the end–like a Sick Of It All kinda thing, or some shit. After listening to it many times, I have concluded that this is not the case. Maybe when she does it live?

Truth be told, I almost went with “Play Hard” feat. Akon on this one. I had hoped it would recapture some of that “Sexy Bitch” vibe, but the chorus is just too cornball, even for a #listicle where cornball popular songs dominate. Although, from time to time, my partying does have a workmanlike aspect. I bring a lunchpail when I party.

By all accounts, so does this dude Torey Goodall, who officially joined the Palace squad via this vid. I still believe, as I wrote a year ago, that Palace is the coolest company out, and they continue to demonstrate that via low-impact urban night footage–the best and most #rare subgenre of skate footage–and dudes b/s noseblunting ledges in XL t-shirts. Along those lines, the footage of graffiti-strewn South Bank vividly reminds me of Pit footage–and skating there the one time I went to LA. Obviously, the Venice scene is super different now.

Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding – “I Need Your Love” (Nicky Romero remix)/Adidas Madrid internet video

skate this?

As  summer 2013 chugged along, this song reached an almost “Blurred Lines” level of ubiquity. This remix kills the original though–via cowbell, or whatever that sound is towards the end. I heard somewhere that Calvin Harris made $40,000,000 last year, which sounds preposterous, but #edm is super popular all over the world now so maybe not (?).

Also on the Euro tip, Adidas dropped this edit back in June, filmed at a slew of mind-numbing #Euro spots that you probably hadn’t seen before. And in spot porn as well as regular porn, that “newness” reigns supreme.

Like pilot light said, these Adidas web videos have supplanted Transworld vids as destinations for consistent quality skating by the best dudes out, edited with somewhat “indie” and inoffensive production values. Indeed–although the general consensus seems to back Nike as the most #elite shoe team, Adidas has four of the ten-or-so dudes I would throw into a Best Dude Out barstool conversation: Texeira,** Busenitz, Suciu, and Lucas.

To support that argument, Suciu does a fake ollie late f/s half-cab that appears physically impossible before unleashing some of those “crazy” rewind-type ledge tricks. Busenitz’s skating continues to function as an artistic statement on how to live a dominant, fully actualized life, and Texeira’s perfectly balanced b/s nosegrind revert could be the best one since Tae’s in Now ‘n Later.

A$AP Ferg “Shabba” / Javier Sarmiento & Erik J. Pettersson Stee part   

#phatstylez

Conventional wisdom points to “Work” or its remix as Ferg’s most relevant #sots entry. It’s a banger for sure, but another criteria for SOTS is that it elicits the following response: causing one to walk around repeating its chorus over and over again.

Like a mental patient.

Gaining exposure in late July, “Shabba” was also propelled by a video that utilized #whitewomen and a select few celeb cameos–including the car from Magnum P.I.– extremely effectively. And just like A$APs Ferg and Rocky tag-team the track, Sarmiento and Erik J Pettersson tag-team the opening part of the Stee vid, which, truth be told, probably deserves its own post at some point.*** An original concept executed perfectly, Stee combines esoteric #eurotech with the “evolutionary Shorty’s” philosophy of Sk8mafia, aka Those Dudes Who Still Wear XL T-Shirts. Sarmiento continues the trajectory he established in the Firm vid–consistently adding an extra flip out here, an extra 90 degree rotation there, including at least two more honest-to-goodness NBD’s. He must have a quota in his contract or some shit, like how D. Way [allegedly] assigned everyone on Plan B to film at least one NBD a month, or else they were #cut (via early #90s parlance).

And like the aforementioned A$AP production, the part shared by these gentlemen also benefits from legendary cameos. Pettersson himself, who ends the part with some Deca-era Daewon shit at an actual spot, might be the most technical Swede since Yngwie Malmsteen.

But Sarmiento’s contribution to this groundbreaking project attains added relevance through its status as the most sartorially advanced video part since…

wait for it…

Welsh in Free Your Mind/Ryde or Die.

Exhibit A:  Sergio Tacchini (or some shit) technical jogging top during one of the aforementioned                  NBD’s

Exhibit B:  grey Ben Davis-style s/s button down, circa-1994 khakis, crooked snapback

Exhibit C: another Sergio Tacchini/Lotto jogging top w/circa-1998 jeans****

Exhibit D: Oscar-the-Grouch-green sweater, gold chain, circa-1998 jeans

Exhibit E: the above-screencapped striped polo with matching Skytop III’s

What’s that old Seinfeld bit about dudes picking one style of dress when they’re 18 and sticking with it for [or 4, i guess] life?

does Sk8mafia hand sign into the rays of the setting sun

HONORABLE MENTION: Youness Amrani web part; FINALLY–an honest-to-G*d sugarcane on a handrail

ps. twitter – @carbonite1994 , insta – @frozenincarbonite, tumblr – cokewhitehalfcabs.tumblr.com. Everything on this site is automatically cross-posted (via #usenet parlance) there. Yes, frozenincarbonite.tumblr.com was taken…

*it even came on the fucking Sirius internet radio station I was listening to as I wrote this post!    not the “top 40” station either…

**can’t believe he switched to slim straight tho

***Tyler Surrey is so underrated that he’s almost correctly rated

****who even makes jeans like that anymore? Even Ross/Burlington Coat Factory have switched to 100% slim straight

*****or 4, as the case may be