Slice - slice.seriouseats.com

Slice Loves Cool J

Posted by Adam Kuban, November 18, 2004 at 2:15 PM

The Slice Academy may have been too hasty in giving Ted Leo/Pharmacists the award for Best Supporting Location in a Music Video last week. But to avoid a Paul Hamm–style debacle, we'll create a new category: Best Use of a Pizzeria in a Music Video. How these awards categories differ, we don't know. Don't care, either. They're not real awards anyway.

Without further ado, the winner is LL Cool J for "Hush/Shake It Baby" (above).

You see, I got home the other night, flipped through some channels, and stopped on BCAT (Brooklyn Cable Access Television). I love the hip-hop, so Video Explosion (10:30 p.m. Friday, Ch. 35/68), a rap-video program, caught my eye. LL Cool J's "Hush" was on. So there's Uncle L rhyming in a record store, lifting his shirt to show his six-pack abs. Cut to the next scene and LL's IN A PIZZERIA! With a shorty. Doing the "fold hold" with a slice.

The concept of the video is "then and now," with flashbacks to the eighties in which we see a young LL (played by his son Najee) courting his future wife, Simone. Young LL takes her to a pizzeria on the back of his bike, where dinner consists of one slice cut in half—this is James Todd Smith pre-bling. Even though he may have skimped on the slice, he delivers the ice, presenting his girl with a modest necklace after dinner, outside the pizzeria, where a sign can be seen advertising slices for $0.75.

While Slice was excited to see World Famous Ray's in the Ted Leo video the other week, LL's pizzeria scenes are more fulfilling. It's endearing to us to see the young LL order the slice cut in half or to watch both the younger and older Cool Js become visibly irked at Simone's excessive use of spice. And it's sweet how the then- and now-LL offers Mrs. Cool J a sip of soda after she bites into a too-hot slice.

We also like how LL keeps it real by going back to Coliseum Mall on Jamaica Avenue in Queens. It's fairly believable that a hip-hop star would want to take a trip down Memory Lane to where it all began twenty-some years ago.

The only thing unbelivable about the video? There's no way Mr. J could keep that six-pack eating pizza.

2 Comments Favorite this!  (0)

Tags: Celebrities, television, TV, videos