Alex Ovechkin had a busy summer. He presented 1,000,000 Rubles to the Dynamo Moscow Youth Hockey Program. He signed on with Mr. Big. He recreated the album cover for Funkadelic classic, Maggot Brain (okay, that's a Photoshop I did).
Speaking of forays into hip hop culture, he also did provide a guest rap and appear in the video for Sasha Belyi's "Champion". The music video for this track was released this weekend, and it is all kinds of wonderful. Check it out. Ovi's verse begins at 2:55.
If you're wondering what this song is about -- as if it wasn't clear from the genre that it's about how great the rapper is -- our own Dmitry Chesnokov tells us that it's a song about how if you become a champion, a lot of things come to you. And how you can flip others. (That makes a little more sense once you know that Sasha Belyi is also a judoka, the martial art focused on throwing and takedowns.)
Via Russian Machine Never Breaks, here's a translation of Ovechkin's mad rhymes for those of you who don't speak Russian:
Alumni of Dynamo
8 on the back.
In the All-Star game all attention is on me.On the NatTeam since 17
Scored 100 points in a season
Gold medal in Canada in '08Among the ten best players of the decade,
Stick in my hands, Rap in my headphones,
Saying hello from Washington,
Together with Sanya Belyi,
For every champion[And then a bizarre sound that sounds like the English words "Look out!"]
I'll be honest: that's pretty tame. I was sort of hoping he'd call out Kris Versteeg or Brad Marchand. What the NHL needs -- and has always needed, in my opinion -- is a bona fide rap battle.
That said, by rapping (shall we say) not terribly, I do believe Ovechkin did just put the entire NHL on notice. No one's going to mistake Ovi for Nas or Gift of Gab, but he may have just asserted himself as the top rapper in the NHL.
His competition is scarce. For instance, here's Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron rapping "Black and Yellow" during the Bruins' Stanley Cup celebrations:
In their defense, this wasn't recorded in studio. Also, they're probably a little drunk. (Although that's not an excuse. Screamin' Jay Hawkins was hammered when he recorded "I Put a Spell on You".)
And here's Kris Versteeg rapping Fergie's "Glamorous" for Mouthpiece Sports:
Uh. I'm just gonna go ahead and declare Ovechkin the illest.
s/t to Russian Machine Never Breaks.
Follow Harrison Mooney on Twitter at @HarrisonMooney
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