Pepsi Gets It Right

It’s rare that a company simultaneously exploits a culture and does it justice. Last night I was watching TV, and I happened to catch a particularly interesting Pepsi commercial. The scene: a DJ battle with the infamous Roc Raida on the turntables doing his signature crowd-pleasing body tricks. My reaction was a Scooby Doo inspired, “Ruh?” It’s certainly not often that a well-deserving DJ (or the DJ battle, a bedrock of hip-hop culture) gets some shine and national airtime. But it doesn’t end there. Raida steps away from the tables, and his opponent jumps on. You hear the sounds of scratching and juggling as the other DJ starts manipulating the tables and mixer. After a moment, Roc Raida notices the setup is unplugged, so he shoves the cover off the podium to reveal Rahzel—legendary beat-boxer of The Roots—hiding inside. With a can of Pepsi, of course.

Try as I might, I cannot muster up any righteous indignation that my beloved culture is being used to peddle cans of soda. To put it simply, that shit was f-f-fresh! And if that makes me a pawn of capitalism and a bad person… eh. I’ll deal with it.