One Love: The Game. The Life.
The claim on the reverse of the DVD that this mixtape is "packed with action from start to finish" is no exaggeration. From the moment you hit "play" to when the disc stops spinning, One Love is a barrage of basketball brilliance, taking you on a trip down a memory lane paved with dunks, rejections, crossovers, and all manner of general nastiness.
The concept behind this tape was to set the hottest high school hoops highlights to a background of the nicest hip-hop around, and the idea is executed perfectly. Who wouldn’t want to see NBA greats like Shaq, K.G., Kobe and TMac tearing it up to the sounds of Cash Brown, Black Thought, Masta Ace, Royce da 5’9’’ and many others? These tracks aren’t your average mixtape cuts either; they’re legitimate hits, each one serving as the perfect partner to clip after clip of the stars before they made it big.
Perhaps the nicest surprise of this DVD was the consistently high quality of the footage. On first reading that One Love was primarily older, hard-to-find clips of high school basketball, I was expecting dark, grainy video shot from the fourteenth row of the bleachers and "highlights" that consisted of fast-break lay-ups and wide-open jumpers. However, you see neither of these on this DVD, which contains bright, sharp images throughout, with every play nice enough to have even the non-basketball fan slack-jawed in amazement.
The official running time of
One Love is forty-four minutes, but it took me nearer to a hundred from start to finish, with virtually every clip making me reach for the rewind button on my remote control. As often as not, I watched and re-watched parts to make out who exactly it was wrecking up the court, but host Sway (of MTV’s
The Wake Up Show) informs viewers that this is unnecessary, directing them to a handy feature accessible from the main menu called
Who Dat?. This is a fast-paced montage which identifies the player providing each of the highlights shown, giving the viewer a helping hand in recognizing the big names on show. While it might not be that hard to recognize Shaq in his slimmer days or
Rasheed Wallace before he grew that grimy beard of his, it’s easy to miss cameo appearances by
Jason Richardson (putting down a double-footed three-sixty),
Raymond Felton,
Rashard Lewis or Rip Hamilton when he was somehow even skinnier.
Interpolated among the reels of ridiculousness are live performances by Scratch and The Lifesavas and segments with Tony Touch, who drops a little knowledge on us, briefly covering the minutiae of scratching, cutting, mixing and the world of disc jockeying in general. We also make a visit to a two-time West Fourth Street dunk champion going by the name of "Air Jamaica" and the famous Mitchell and Ness store in Philadelphia, where Big Rube and members of the Portland Trailblazers discuss the throwback jersey phenomenon.
One Love is a striking blend of hip-hop and hoops, and an entertaining journey back to a time of short shorts and flat-top haircuts. If you’ve ever wondered how A.I. looked before the braids and tats or wanted to see
Dwyane Wade when he was years from becoming The Flash, this is the DVD you need.
One Love is a must-see for any real fan of the basketball and rap game. Go cop it while it’s hot.
- C.Y. Ellis
