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ESPN is running a promo spot that features clips from the Nelly video "Air Force Ones," and ends with the text, "Without Sports, there'd be nothing to wear." I'm sure the nice folks at ESPN see this as a simple extension of our consumer culture, using sports as a way to induce people to buy crap, but, for me, the commercial confirms my suspicion that both the song "Air Force Ones," and its video represent a shifting construction of masculinity in our culture.
In his song "Air Force Ones," Nelly describes the lengths he and his posse go to in order to find the right sneakers for social occasions. While earlier shoe-shopping men might be concerned by how sneakers affect their athletic performance, the performative aspects of their shoes is purely aesthetic. Rather than boast about his physical prowess, in the song Kyjuan brags about his shopping ability when he says, "you couldn't get this color if you had a personal genie."
Through much of late capitalism, the "work" of consumption is generally considered a woman's role, but here consumptive ability is posited as an extension of the rappers' masculinity. As if listeners may be confused about the rappers gender, the chorus "Big Boy" punctuates each line. Moreover, in one moment, a feminine voice, presumably in awe of Kyjuan's shoes, asks, "Where you getting them colors, are you dyeing them?", suggesting the woman lacks the ability to shop as well as Kyjuan.
In addition to the glorification of shopping in "Air Force Ones," one line seems to subvert the macho masculinity of most rap music. In a boastful tone, Murphy Lee says, "I'm tryin to keep it up like a one minute man." As this author is a white graduate student, he is unaware of the reference in this line, but it seems to suggest the brevity of intercourse, a far cry from the classic Ice Cube verse, "my jimmy goes deep, so deep," nonetheless. Finally the video depicts Kyjuan wearing an Oklahoma State University football jersey, inexplicably representing an inferior school to the state's flagship university.
Perhaps this blogger simply had a hard time decoding the cultural symbolism embedded in "Air Force Ones," but it certainly raises questions about the construction of masculinity in twenty-first century consumer culture.