I love when Santa's Reindeer start talking MAD SHIT to Kobe and Lebron! The crazy minds at Nike are always at it with their "'Lil Dez" commercial series featuring Kobe and Lebron puppets, and this Christmas installment is even better. For real, the only time I can stand Kobe is in puppet form... Watch below!
Lupe Fiasco as "Blitzen" -- an appropriate reindeer-rapper match -- challenges black Santa and his elves, err, puppets Kobe and Lebron to a little three-on-three.
Finally, the 'Drunking on Reindeer' routine! Big bad Santa (voiced by KRS-One) and his boys takes it to the rim and beat down those poor Reindeers. LE SAD. "C'mon, Brons, have some respect. He's got hooves not hands, what the heck you expect?!" Oh Kobe [Puppet], you're always on point.
Brooklyn rapper Buckshot has always flown under the Hip-Hop radar releasing aggressive tracks, yet remaining voiceless in the main game. This time around he teams with one of Hip-Hop's founding fathers KRS-One on Survival Skills. A fitting album title since KRS-One teaches a thing or two to Buckshot who still seems amateur next to this legend.
Survival Skills falls short when it comes to having a point. A bunch of MCs grabbing the mic and lyrically flaming the stage with why they matter. KRS-One sounds typical and delivers what one would expect from the classical rapper. Even collaborations with Talib Kweli, Smif and Wessun, K'Nann, Immortal Technique and Mary J. Blige leave little to enjoy.
Buckshot's delivery is on point, unfortunately he and his peers are lyrically inconsistent. Wasting a lot of time trying to be relevant when in reality not one MC has said anything pertinent. KRS-One tries his best to help mentor Buckshot to the top, but Survival Skills is a beginner's level album.
I'm certainly not ready for the switch to DTV and frankly, I don't care. But what I will miss is randomly late-night airing of The Bridge/25 Years Of Video Music Box and their throwback videos from the days when Hip-Hop was still raw. How many times do you get to see KRS-One's "My Philosophy" followed by Heavy D and The Boys "Mr. Big Stuff" in one segment?! Never.
