BRRRR!

My blog is called "The Purple Drank" cuz of my affinity for hip-hop. I gotta write about it sometimes. If you like reading about Northwestern sports, but don't like when I occasionally tangentially link NU sports to hip-hop, even when they do collide as they do in here, I wouldn't blame you if you skip this post.

My excuse for writing about it this time is that I got a theory: sports success is nearly entirely due to music. I'll be explaining this theory more fully in a few weeks, in what will be the best post in the history of this site. But I saw something today that caught my attention.

The lesser part of my theory states that how well you do in part is attributable to the music you listen to. You know how great closers always have great entrance music? You know how that one middle reliever who enters to Creed always has a 5.70 E.R.A.? 

This theory is, as of yet, infallible. For example, I've been informed by insider sources I have that Indiana has been blasting the soundtrack to the upcoming Hannah Montana movie in their preseason drills, and I've recently discovered that the reason for NU's 34-game winless streak was in part because several walk-on offensive linemen that were engineering students developed a working time machine, went to the year 2004, and stole a mixtape off an angsty 13-year old's desk containing, but not limited to, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Fall Out Boy, and, for some reason, the song "Doo Doo Head" by Soulja Boi, which is sort of an outlier if you ask me. 

Long story short, I've developed an algorithm that allows me to calculate how good a college football team will be based on their practice listening music. And the reason I bring this up is simple: this video, posted by palestra.net. 

WE'RE LISTENING TO GUCCI MANE IN PRACTICE? 

Yes! At the 51 second mark, Gucci Mane, my favorite current rapper is blaring in the background. (I'm pretty sure those are two separate songs, too.) I wouldn't make a post just based on a 3 second snippet of Gucci though, what prompted this post is the reaction of my new favorite player on the team, senior DT Marshall Thomas, whose urge to yell "I KNOW I LOVE HER" is so strong that he removes his helmet, and then he spends like three seconds Mutombo-wagging at the camera and shaking his head.  (Also, for a couple seconds, I thought the dude playing at :12 and :24 was Gucci as well, but, no, that's these jokers, who I've never heard of and after a few listens have decided I never want to hear again.) (Re: the jokers who made that other song who sounded like Gucci Mane a little: Was the "pause" era so short that you can say "swag super cool blowing like a fan" and nobody cares?)

Gucci, for those of you who don't know - most of you, right? - is pretty much the best rapper out there right now, and one of his lyrics provided the inspiration for this sites URL. The song in question is "I Think I Love Her", which, all told, is pretty bad, mainly because it features some girl with a really annoying voice prominently, but Gucci still shines. 

Anyway, my point is, I got a theory that states that the music you listen to can determine how well your team will play. Point being: WE'RE GOING TO WIN SEVENTEEN GAMES THIS SEASON.  Count em. The algorithm never lies, folks. 

Welcome to The Purple Drank!

Ladies, gentlemen, Amado Villarreals, welcome. This is the Purple Drank.

If you're here, you're probably a fan of one of two things: either Northwestern athletics, or the promathazine-based hallucinogenic drug widely referred to as purple drank. (Really, Wikipedia? You have a purple drank page? Anyway, back to the post.)

In this inaugural post, I will poorly summarize both by providing a brief primer for people who came here looking for one of those things, but know little about the other.

First, drank fans: Northwestern University is a proud academic institution founded in 1857, that, for some reason or another, decided to give a rats ass about athletics from its founding until roughly 1995. Somewhere along the line, its administrators had the bright idea to join an athletic conference with nine ten other schools, all of whom give multiple rats asses about athletics, are literally all at least three times the size of Northwestern, are named after states (with the exception of whatever the hell Purdue is supposed to mean) and who carry tremendous amounts of civic/state pride in their taxpayer funded athletic teams. Northwestern, on the other hand, is, like, really small, named after some directions which the location of the school really doesn't represent at all, and, the fanbase consist of approximately 1/3 of the already small school and it's alumni. You don't have to be one of the uncomfortably studious athletes to figure out how those matchups went for the vast majority of the school's history.

Now, NU fans: Purple Drank is a mixture of cough syrup, Sprite, and generally, Jolly Ranchers popular throughout the southern hip-hop community. Sizzurp influenced music is generally really slow, repetitive, and awful as all hell. Syrup gave rise to the screwed-and-chopped music scene, which involves taking normal songs, slowing them down, and randomly repeating some words over and over again so that nobody could possibly enjoy it as much as the original. Obviously, I'm highlighting some pretty bad examples - full disclosure,  I love me some southern hip-hop - but for better or worse, drank has given creative aide to every rapper from Weezy to UGK to all these clowns.

Now that that's over with, we come to the question I'm sure both syrup and Wildcat fans alike have upon coming to this blog: what do these two things have in common? What is the possible connection between Pimp C and C.J. Bachér? (besides a love of chinchilla fur coats and Pimp C's 14 touchdowns to 18 interceptions in his final year at quarterback before his tragic and sudden drank-related demise.) (Oh, and, R.I.P. Pimp C.) 

At face value, not much. In fact, I went ahead and cross-checked the database of all people who have ever attended a Northwestern football game and all people who have ever sipped purple drank and made a Venn diagram, the results of which are below.

(My guesses as to the two: rapper Young Dro and outgoing president Henry S. Bienen.)

Anyway, here's where I finish this post and wrap this convoluted, terrible metaphor up nice and tight. To me, the similarity is this: both the purple drank scene and NU sports have come a long way - chopped-n-screwed music used to just be a couple of dj's in Houston dicking around with records and getting overwhelmingly messed up by cough syrup, now it's a friggin youtube cottage industry, with random heads from Houston with approximately no talent going platinum. The phrase "doormat of the Big Ten" has been used in approximately 42,000 articles about Northwestern sports, yet I think anything below mediocrity from an NU football team would be considered a major disappointment. 

Yet, for every great Northwestern sports moment or objectively well-done youtube chopped-and-screwed video (they even slowed down the pre-video dialogue! and smart not to really mess up andre's verse too much), there's too many terrible examples.

So, basically, sipping the purple drank is about slowing down and enjoying those moments. For southern rap songs, the slowing down is literal - its sort of the side effect of all the codeine in your blood system - but with NU, you need to slow your roll and force yourself to savor the good times. Right now, we're in the midst of those good times - like I said earlier, people expect mediocrity, at least, from our football team, and with Kevin Coble graduating, we're looking at a now or never year for our basketball team, and, truth be told, I'm feeling now more than never. So, that's what this blog is about. Northwestern fans have to accept our place in the sports universe, and that, plus the Sprite and jolly ranchers, can make the good times so much sweeter. So sip some sizzurp with me and enjoy it. 

Oh, and the color. Purple drank is purple, kinda like the uniforms our team wears. I hope you got that.

Anyway, posts in the next few days look to be way less convoluted, more relevant, better written, and less depressingly unfunny, so stick around.