Slice

Slice Loves Cool J

Posted by Adam Kuban, November 18, 2004

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.

THE PIZZA IN LL'S PAST
This is not the first time Cool J has featured pizza in his work. Recall some lines from "Big Ole Butt," from the 1995 album Walking With a Panther:

I sat down to eat, ordered my food/ I said to the waitress, "I don't mean to be rude/ But I'll take you on a platter"/ She said, "You got a girl," I said, "It don't matter/ You look like you're tastier than a pipin' hot pizza/ What's your name?" She said, "My tag says Lisa"

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.

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