Cultural musicologists have long suspected that in the future, all NFL contracts will be negotiated through rap lyrics, but few understood the frightening speed at which the future was approaching.
The discredited cultural dogma that all rappers want to be ballers and all ballers want to be rappers was, at best, a gross oversimplification, but it makes perfect sense that a baller who indeed is a rapper might bring this new paradigm screaming into the present.
Le'Veon Bell, a Steelers hyper-talented running back, dependable pass-catching option with the expunged record of questionable judgment as LeGarrette Blount's star-crossed Uber driver, last weekend became the first baller in history to commence contract negotiations in a rap song, and perhaps any song.
For you future trivia champions of America, the song was "Focus," a semi-brooding rap in which Bell laments that the haters continue to question his commitment in light of 2015's dope suspension, and the first financial figure ever mentioned in this new transaction vehicle was $15 million.
"I'm at the top, and if not, I'm the closest," goes the lyric. "I'm a need 15 a year and they know this."
The Steelers, as it happens, did not know this, but as one front-office source speaking on condition of anonymity for reasons too obvious to even state told me, "I guess we do now."
So Bell is nothing if not shrewd.
Knowing most of the football club's power structure is taking this period to string some vacation together, and that the Rooneys have long monitored rap lyrics for guidance on how to run their football operation, Bell must have decided that history could simply no longer wait.
Even if the Rooneys, Kevin Colbert, Mike Tomlin, Omar Khan, and the club's other key roster architects and capologists were idle, the chances they'd just be chillin' and consuming rap had therefore only increased in Bell's mind. Even if, on the off chance, some among the Pittsburgh power structure were unaware of exactly when his next rap song was scheduled to drop, they'd fast be hip. Or is it hop?
With Bell under contract for this season and eligible to get a franchise tag in 2017 that would cost the football club far less than $15 million, the chances that Art Rooney II was sitting around over the holiday weekend working on his own rap-id response were not terribly good.
Can you really see The Deuce tapping out some tepid rap on his iPad?
"Yeah, let's see, maybe something like this: L Bell most appreciated, but maybe needs to be sedated. Fifteen mill indicatin' the man just can't be sated."
You might not see the Steelers wading in on this platform, but that's temporary. What if we get to late July and they're getting the vibe that Bell won't be matriculating at St. Vincent College for the foreseeable future. What if Bell, along about July 27, drops this lyric on 'em?
"Won't be gettin' on the road, to Latrobe, talkin' dough. Need 15, check the rap then check the cap."
July turns into August, the Steelers running game is right where it left off, in the dubious hands of Fitz Toussaint, and Art Rooney II is going to have to get serious about his song-writing:
"Still feelin' L Bell so swell, but what the hell? Need a back, that's a fact, but 15 mill a buzz kill."
Hey, I didn't say he was going to be any good at it.
Before you know it, they've dragged this thing into September and within a week of the Sept. 12 opener, Bell's latest drops:
"Ain't capitulatin,' teammates know I'm waitin,' salary still a worry so front office needs to hurry. Still need 15 to thrive, but can survive on 14.5."
Movement!
The starting friction of post-modern history can be brutal, but the Steelers eventually will have to get on the right side. It's probably somewhere in their rich tradition, this gene for adaptation. Perhaps somewhere in long-buried details of their early NFL years, there's a story about Whizzer White, their first pick in the 1938 draft, communicating with Arthur J. Rooney himself in the musical style of the day.
"A tisket, a tasket, need cash for my yellow basket."
Coincidentally, White wanted 15 as well.
Fifteen thousand.
The Chief, leveraged by the knowledge that White would soon become a Rhodes Scholar (and eventually a Supreme Court justice), managed to get him for exactly that, $15K. There's no record of him writing any lyrics.
