DCBLOG ExtraTime: Some Gravy & A Rich Shore Kid Come Walking Into a Club...

BY DC CUEVA 

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Tomorrow night, the MTV Reality focus will turn to the show that became the most popular in the channel's history... and to something that's not happened in its second life since the last act of its original series a decade ago. When the Family Vacation relaunch of Jersey Shore took off back in the spring of 2018, one person was missing when the originals of Seaside Heights gathered back in Miami - and mostly out of fear that she might get into it again with her ex turned baby daddy... but that will change when Sammi "Sweetheart" Giancola will finally join in on the antics of the Sitch, Snooki & friends. And that leads us to this first installment of this fall 2023 cycle of ExtraTime, which has its roots in something a bit different from the land of fist pumps, but has a spiritual link to it of sorts.

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...