Feel the Hoop Connection With Chip Tha Ripper.
by Tzvi Twersky
You guys might have noticed a Hoop Connection ad in the last couple issues of the magazine. Now you might be thinking to yourself, why do I care what ads have been in the mag? I read the mag for its content. And, sometimes, I’d agree with you on this one (when it’s not shoe related). Every once in a while, however, a company that is trying to do some good in the hoops world runs an ad by us. And that ad always catches my eye. Hoop Connection is one of those companies and this ad is one of those ads.
Hoop Connection, founded by Mike Brown and VP Eric DeLary, is the premiere online community and recruiting resource used to connect college coaches with players that otherwise might have slipped through the cracks. In essence, it helps talented kids receive college-educations, and it helps college coaches find talented players. In other words, it assists players who—due to their playing on a small team, living in a small town or not playing high school ball at all—wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go to college, let alone play college ball. We all know someone who should have played college ball, but never had the proper training or exposure. Hoop Connection is trying to stop this from happening to the current generation of kids.
In next month’s magazine—which I promise will be so, so fresh—Hoop Connection will be unveiling its new contest, the “I Am This Court Video Contest.” This summer competition aims to scour the country for the “best video to go along with the new hit song Hoop Connection performed by Chip Tha Ripper…with the winner gaining national recognition and exposure.”
The rules of the competition are simple: download Chip Tha Ripper’s song from the contest homepage; you, your squad or your crew create the video for it; upload the video to YouTube; and fill out the form letting Hoop Connection know your video’s link.
Listen to the song right here:
The song’s creator, our man Chip Tha Ripper (legal name Charles Worth) is an up-and-coming 22 year-old rapper who hails from St. Clair—Superior, on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. Now friends with “Bronny” (LeBron) James and co-recording with Kid Cudi, Chip was spurred into action by an upbringing in his rough neighborhood. After barely a thought, Chip decided to partner up with Hoop Connection for the contest.
“Comin’ up, I dibble-dabbled in basketball,” says Chip. “I was always more into rhyming. But I see a deep connect between what I went through trying to make it in rap and between what kids who got overlooked in hoops gotta do to make it. I’m down with the way Hoop Connection is trying to help kids make it.”
Here at SLAM we are also down. So go check it out.
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