Summertime Mixtape #4: Kenny Hughes “Third Eye View”

“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.

Gangstarrs

Two tricks, that may or may not be related by blood, which popped out at me watching the great Gang of Fourstar tour vid: rumored-to-be-pro-now Tyler Bledsoe’s fully functional ledge combo at 2:30, making the most of a multi-dimensional object in 3D European space. Later, skipper Rick Howard’s backside nosegrind at 11:02, or more specifically, the way he slips the front foot back just so after the pop-out… really I did watch this like ten times. It’s weird, every time one of these Crailtap-backed tour productions comes out (starting back with “Beware of the Flare”) it always hits me how this is probably the best showcase for Rick Howard’s skating these days, though I was a big fan of his section in the Lakai video. I don’t know. Bledsoe’s gap to backside lipslide might have been the best trick in the video. Well, think I’ll watch the foot-flutter again, hold on.