BY DC CUEVA
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| Instagram @YungGravy |
In two of America's biggest pop culture events held fifty-one weeks apart in the month of February and in the same region, a homage was paid to the one musical genre that has influenced generations of fans and our modern American culture more than any other in hip-hop. In February 2022 in Inglewood, CA, Super Bowl LVI represented its biggest moment yet when Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and 50 Cent shared the stage with R&B queen Mary J. Blige at its halftime show, taking place in one of hip-hop's major hubs of Los Angeles. A year later up in downtown, the 2023 Grammys also gave an ode to the genre's 50th anniversary as LL Cool J, Run DMC and more legends took the stage... a long way from when it was shunned from the spotlight of "Music's Biggest Night."
Across the country is another hotbed of this world of Atlanta, Georgia, where the success of OutKast, Ludacris, Future, 21 Savage, T.I. and Lil' Jon led The New York Times to call the ATL "hip-hop's center of gravity." The city's hip-hop culture also serves as the basis of multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning FX series Atlanta, which chronicles the lives of a pair of cousins as they try to navigate their rise up the ranks in the music industry, similar to Empire on former sibling FOX. And mirroring what has been happening the past decade, a number of artists who call North Georgia home have become active in local and national political movements, from Black Lives Matter to voting rights.
What do these two worlds of hip-hop and the MTV Shore franchise have in common? Last year, they collided for one weekend when the man at the heart of its most-recent addition got to party it up with one of its biggest stars to break out into the mainstream to celebrate a birthday... and all that star got to do was to sample someone who first made a name for himself some three decades ago. That's all part of that time when Some Gravy and a Rich Shore Kid Came Walking Into a Club...
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| Parker (in blue) with Buckhead Shore cast (MTV) |
The man at the heart of summer '22 in the Buckhead house by the lake was none other than Parker Lipman, a guy who shared an attribute with Vinny in Jersey in being a mama's boy... and who also saw himself as the "head buck" of the house who also served as the dad of the group having his current and ex-girlfriends and his friends living with him in the lake house. But he was more than that: his family also run regional fast-food joint Zaxby's with over 900 locations around the South and even as far as Utah... and being part of a rich family has afforded Parker the chance to live the good life.
Those 59,000 users who follow him on his Instagram account @ParkerLipman and peek into his daily stories know that he is a busy man traveling across America and around the world... and mostly he flies not only in first class, but also in his very own private jet. That has allowed him to travel to attend big sporting events and music festivals, spending time with a slew of celebs that also includes part of the first family of Paramount+ in Scarlet & Sistine Stallone (Sylvester's daughters) and a Real Housewives' daughter in Brielle Biermann. But most importantly he's hung out with music & hip-hop royalty, which brings us to his latest member of that fan group located in another part of this vast country of ours.
A 90-minute drive down I-52 from the Twin Cities lies the largest city in Minnesota outside of either Minneapolis or St. Paul of Rochester: population just over 106,000 near the Iowan border. For a place known everywhere as home of mythical giant Paul Bunyan, this was once the home to the world's tallest man: 7'8" Ukranian Igor Vovkovinskiy, who passed away two years ago a month shy of turning 39. And Rochester also just happens to be home to one of the biggest names in hip-hop right now.
That debut track sampled "Mr. Sandman" by The Chordettes, while another in "Gravy Train" uses backing from Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From," which became a victory anthem for the Tampa Bay Lightning en route to back-to-back Stanley Cups and had that title inscribed into their title rings. It's no surprise that Gravy's style mixes modern trap with the soul and oldies movements from the '50s & '60s, and with inspiration from Three 6 Mafia and Smokey Robinson. He even had a brief fling with someone a decade & a half his senior: Sheri Easterling after he made TikTok star Addison Rae's momma his date to last year's VMA's. But for the one hit that brought him to broader status in the music world, he'd have look to someone even bigger and just as or much older as Sheri.
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| Astley performing at the '23 Glastonbury Festival (WireImage) |
"Never Gonna Give You Up" introduced Astley to the world and vaulted him to #1 in twenty-five countries, followed by more hits off his debut LP Whenever You Need Somebody, earning it a Brit Award (the UK's own Grammy). He would have mixed success in the following years that drove him to a hiatus out of music to tend to his new life as a husband and dad before returning to the fold at the turn of the millennium. But it was several years later that Astley would be unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight when he became the subject of his own internet meme, and an early example of a least favorite aspect of our social media-infused digital world, but also perhaps its most celebrated way of cyber deception.
The "Rickrolling" trend came into global consciousness when an English imageboard website used bait-and-switch tactics on April Fool's Day 2007 to link unsuspecting Internet users to Rick's signature song, resulting in over a billion YouTube views that gave both him & his music new life years before TikTok turned old vintage songs into new ones all over again. This meme saw him score an upset win for "Best Act Ever" at the '08 MTV Europe Music Awards, then taking the stage at Macy's Thanksgiving Parade a few weeks later, and brought him permanently out of musical retirement... and that includes releasing a new single and video that dropped late last month entitled "Dippin' My Feet."
The song that brought Astley his greatest success and biggest global contribution also happens to be the track that formed the basis for Yung Gravy to break into the mainstream: last summer, Gravy decided to throw his hat into the Rickrolling thing by sampling and interpolating "Never Gonna Give You Up" for "Betty (Get Money)."
With EDM star and social media prank man Dillon Francis helping produce the track, Gravy almost immediately went viral both on YouTube and TikTok for that he got to dance in a white fur coat, which spawned over 300,000 reposts on the ladder - many of which using the track's bridge, "Damn Gravy you so vicious, you so clean, so delicious / How come you ain't got no missus?". And in spite of a later lawsuit brought on by Astley contending illegal voice imitation similar to the elephant in the room of the current actors standoff known as A.I., it brought Gravy a Top 30 Billboard hit, a performing spot at that VMA's in Jersey, and to status as poster boy of hip-hop talent discovered on SoundCloud.
Glance over at the Instagram posts Parker has on his page, and besides pics he still has with girlfriends over the years on there (more on that in a moment) -- there are those times where he's crossed paths with Mr. Clean. In November last year after the Buckhead finale, he and Gravy first got to meet up when the star came to Atlanta and played the concert venue next to the Atlanta Braves ballpark, Coca-Cola Roxy. And then come springtime, Gravy returned to the ATL... and also spent some quality time at where castmate JuJu Barney works at, the Magic City strip club. But what happened before they stepped inside that adult joint embodies the meaning of being a true rap star.
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| Twitter/X @IceBox |
A must-visit place in Atlanta for anyone who is part of the who's who of the music world is the offices and store of diamond and jewelry retailer IceBox, located in that Buckhead district north of downtown. The most-expensive pieces of silverware and diamonds offered at its office are a 22-milimeter diamond necklace and an 18-karet Cartier Santos watch which each cost $150,000 a pop... and even nice earrings will still net you $300 a pair. Post Malone stopped by here in 2019 on his Runaway tour to grab some birthday bling for 21 Savage, while tourmate Swae Lee bought a diamond ring after FaceTiming Ric Flair - and it's part of a star-studded clientele that also includes Lil' Pump, Lil' Baby and Lil' Durk.
The first time YouTube cameras spotted Gravy inside the IceBox was back in the summer of 2019, where after "Mr. Clean" brought him to prominence saw him try on those Cartier shades, followed by a return visit just before its temporary pandemic closure where he tagged along comedian and San Jose State alum Trevor Wallace to give his AirPod Pro plugs the iced-out treatment in diamonds. But for his third visit, Gravy asked Parker if he can accompany him to the office just so he can glance over at all of those six-figure watches.
The timepieces this blogger usually buys cost about $20 with no frills... and the most recent one I bought was a cheap watch for $3 at a local Daiso store (Japan's equivalent of a local Dollar Tree place). But for those who are stars and need those bands to both keep an eye out on time and to boast their superiority in those luxurious diamonds, it can easily go into the six figures. Given the success of "Betty" and how he's grown in the time since his last visit, Gravy was in dire need to update his Rolex watch bought pre-pandemic as well as to find a replacement for a lost pinky ring. But getting new bling for himself wasn't the only thing on his mind...
When the big names reach the big time, they also have to figure out what else to give to the most adorable members of their families... and when it comes to pets, they too also deserve to have the fame. In Buckhead last year, the spot given to an animal to serve as mascot of a Shore season went not to an animatronic phone like it was for the duck in Jersey or the gator in Floribama, but to Parker's pet dog who appeared many times in the confessional room. And it was that in mind that IceBox decided to treat Gravy's furry companion - also a golden retriever - with his own bling to mark his tenth birthday... the price tag of that belated birthday gift of a 14-karat gold chain: $75,000 -- all part of this spree.
That trip to the IceBox was only part of a March Spring Break weekend in the ATL that also doubled as his 25th birthday extravaganza... and a year that's seen Gravy hang out with the likes of Machine Gun Kelly, Mason Ramsey, and Mr. First Class himself - Jack Harlow... he even pulled a Busta Rhymes and spent quality time with Martha Stewart, of all people. He even showed off to the IceBox folks a gift he got in a gold Pizza Hut card, meaning free pizza for as long as he's alive... it's wasn't long ago Gravy was delivering pies all sauced up and decorated with pepperoni, pineapple and the like. And now, he's well on his way to delivering hits of his own.
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Now, an extra footnote to this story... and in one of those "Only on MTV" kind of deals: a good-old plot twist. That Buckhead love triangle that lived in the Lipman lake house also included newbie to the bunch & girlfriend at the time Savannah Gabriel, and Parker's ex Katie Canham. That threesome harkened back a bit to LC/Stephen/Kristen or the many other ones over the years in our MTV world, and like it was in Laguna Beach there was also plenty of drama involving Katie, Sav and Parker... but it was what happened well after their summer wrapped up that caught our eye.
Another threesome that grabbed our attention was in that first summer in Siesta Key: you all may remember Juliette, Alex and Madisson... and as this post goes up the ladder just became the latest in a slew of MTV alumni to announce a pregnancy (and in Maddy's case, a rainbow baby after a devastating miscarriage). But for Jules, her struggles with the King of the Key was only part of her with finding true love in that capital of Florida beaches: flings with Bachelorette alum Robby Hayes, Sam Logan and with Clark recently didn't go anywhere.
But what happens when you don't let the queen of the Key follow through on that old saying that "third time's the charm?" Well then, see for yourself below... too bad we likely won't get the second reality show crossover into that beach concave.
This weekend: DCBLOG kicks off our coverage of the main course of our summer & fall: Season 2 of The Challenge USA as "the fifth major pro sport" returns to the world of broadcast network television. This includes the return to both the show and to CBS of the poster boys of its MTV crossover in Paulie and Josh, and this year's crop of newbies including the ex-boyfriend of one of last year's wannabes just as a new season of THAT show is about to begin with the unveiling of its new cast. We'll get to know that one & the rest of the rookies, and discuss all else when we preview the season and introduce the newbies coming up then... and we'll also let you in on one of the most unique sports you'll find anywhere -- and the link it has to this sophomore joint. Hope you'll join us then, Challenge Nation...
- I AM DC
#DCBLOG
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