“Work” is the low-hanging fruit of the Gangstarr catalogue for the purposes of video part soundtracks, or if you like, the unawares and poorly defended coastal town rich with grains and tradable goods to be pillaged. If “Work” came out in the Youtube age there would be a half-dozen edits soundtracked to it within a fortnight. It takes a more discerning mind to have predicted the tectonic shifts of industry trends and ‘outboard hype’ such that Kenny Hughes doing a melon grab above the coping on a mini ramp for an Emerica ad, my own personal first recollection of his skating, would potentially be a realistic ad to see run in the current environment ad cycle some 15 years later. Kenny Hughes is here skating in sweated up T-shirts, 360 flipping across schoolyards and putting the pressure to crooked grinds generally. And, that nollie f/s heelflip. Kenny Hughes for better or for worse was an Element careerist, and you may be tempted to call the brand’s bottom around the time of his exit. Does he get more respect or less for riding for Element as long as he did? I would argue, more.
Tags: 1998, Aretha Franklin, element, Gangstarr, Guru, jeans, Kenny Hughes, klink, navy suede, nollie frontside heelflip, Premiere, respect, The Pillage, trade goods, Treefort
boil the ocean 
June 8, 2012 at 6:10 am |
absolutist.com…
[…]Summertime Mixtape #4: Kenny Hughes “Third Eye View” « boil the ocean[…]…
June 8, 2012 at 12:01 pm |
that switch krooks!
June 9, 2012 at 3:06 pm |
if i could skate transition like anyone i would want to skate it like kenny hughes
June 10, 2012 at 2:20 am |
You make a good point about riding for Element and respect. I think the company is shit. A brand that started as Underworld Element and had a lot of good things going for it, is now some corporate/mall-brand behemoth. So when I see a video of some random am ripping and then catch a glimpse of Element logos on their boards, I lose respect for that person. It’s like, “Damn … don’t you know any better? Are you that desperate to be sponsored?” The only people who I see riding Element boards at the places I skate are the types of kids who you can just tell will not be skating five years from now, and yet this is the demographic that Element panders to.