Jock Jams Vol. 1 at 30: Tracing Sport, Nostalgia, Hip-Hop Hitting the Mainstream, and the Fall of "YMCA"

"Sports fans everywhere know Gary Glitter's bumbling guitar riff from "Rock and Roll Part 2," culminating in a "Hey Go [insert team name] Go." And when 2 Unlimited asks, "y'all ready for this?" in their hip-hop/jazzercise classic "Get Ready for This," sports stadiums erupt in affirmation. Maybe you heard those tracks for the first time sitting courtside, at a Belgian techno party, or via an electrifying mashup of five-second snippets during TV commercials, which did numbers in an era of actual album sales."

"Hip-hop groups like Naughty by Nature and K7 were still a part of the East Coast underground. Italo house legends Black Box crossed the European rave scene with American hip-hop to make " Strike It Up" (a work of timeless perfection). Additionally, including innuendos like those found in K7's " Come Baby Come " was a risky move for a growing sports media empire like ESPN, who was still trying to convince the general public that the 24-hour news cycle could be applied to sports, too."

"In ESPN's oral history of the birth of Jock Jams, 69 Boyz producer Jay "Ski" McGowan offered the network a way to deal with any fallout from the raunchier tracks on the album. "Hey, if anyone from ESPN asks about 69 Boyz, just say the guys were all born in 1969, and " Tootsee Roll" is a candy and a fun dance and just leave it at that," McGowan said."

Iconic stadium anthems like Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part 2" and 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready for This" became rallying cries at sporting events. Jock Jams Vol. 1, released in July 1995, compiled dance, hip-hop, and rave tracks and linked them increasingly to sports culture. The compilation was a collaboration between ESPN and Tommy Boy Records and arrived when many hip-hop acts were still underground and European Italo house intersected with American hip-hop. Including suggestive tracks posed public-relations risks for ESPN, prompting pragmatic explanations from artists' representatives. Thirty years later, the sports media industry has collapsed and regrown.

Read at Portland Mercury