In the nineties, Treach and Naughty by Nature were everything. And if they said snowboarding was cool, snowboarding was cool.
I remember parts of 1995 like it was yesterday. I was a young man that was one year away from getting his drivers license, with a strong taste for wine coolers and Marb Lights.
At the time I was an enthusiastic, young snowboarder who was about to travel to a far off locale called Mt. Hood to attend High Cascade Snowboard camp where I would get yelled at by Todd Richards for walking across the flat bottom of the vert ramp, watch a French girl almost die on the giant step-up, and revel in watching Burnside locals drive up to Hood in a white limo so they could try to fight all of the older dudes at camp. In other words, it was awesome.
Before I could make my pilgrimage to the west coast to snowboard with other spoiled teenagers, I was sent to Saint Louis, Missouri to spend a few weeks with my old man, as he inhabited the city in search of good times and fast women. My dad wasn’t living in the most economically prosperous area at the time. But as a young skateboarder and snowboarder with a mild hip-hop obsession and a desire for getting my hair braided, it was the perfect place to spend a few weeks before setting off for Hood.
One day after skating around and getting into some mischief with the local hooligans, I came back to my dad’s house and turned on BET. This was 1995 when music television channels still played music videos, and artists put a lot of thought and effort into their video production. As I sat there on the couch drinking a cold soda, I started to nod my head to a song I didn’t recognize. As soon as the lyrics started I was drawn to the TV because the voice was instantly recognizable as one of my favorite rappers, Treach from Naughty by Nature.
Naughty by Nature was at the peak of their fame and creative output and anytime they dropped a new track, you listened. I can remember it so clearly coming out of my old man’s TV: “holler if you here me, though/come and feel me flow.” I was staring at the tube, watching Treach and Vin Rock deal with a swelteringly hot New Jersey summer day when something I never expected happened — they were instantly transported to the side of a mountain.
With my eyes glued to the screen, my head almost exploded as two worlds I loved converged in a mash up of epic proportions. I sat stunned. Naughty by Nature were rapping as snowboarders buttered around Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont.
This was almost 20 years ago, before Shaun White was The Flying Tomato, and every mom in the U.S. would try to relate to you by talking about the Winter Olympics every time you mentioned you were a snowboarder. For a 15-year-old snowboard rat, it was a moment of perfection, and it felt like snowboarding had reached the pinnacle of cool.
That was a huge cultural moment for snowboarding and it cemented snowboarding’s place in the history books when it comes to legit counter-cultures. There actually haven’t been that many nods to snowboarding from the hip-hop community, as it tends to be a pretty white washed sport (besides Coolie, that fool loves snowboarding).
1995 was a good year, and Naughty by Nature made it that much better. When reflecting on the history of snowboarding I often think of this moment, as it will always stick out in my mid as a major triumph for our sport. Maybe other snowboarders my age weren’t hip-hop fans, but when the books are written — and they surely will be written — I hope “Feel Me Flow” makes the book.
