get these nets
Veteran
Sports of The Times; Hip-Hop In Orange And Blue
By William C. Rhoden
- Feb. 18, 1995
That's what I began asking a couple weeks ago when a photographer friend said that the creator of "Go New York Go," the Knicks' catchy signature song, was a young rapper named after one of the Wild West's most notorious outlaws.
I wondered where he lived, was intrigued by the whole idea of a rap subculture that has become intertwined with professional sports, especially basketball.
We missed each other at the National Basketball Association All-Star game in Phoenix last week. Finally, we connected in New York and arranged to meet yesterday afternoon. Jesse sounded like a rapper, talked like a rapper. Did he live the life of a rapper, whatever that was? I arrived at his East Side building, complete with doorman in uniform and spacious lobby. He was on the 27th floor.
Jesse answered the door with an upbeat, "What's up." Came to the door wearing a dark blue Nike skullcap, blue jeans, no socks, low-cut Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars.
Meet Jesse Jaymes from Roslyn, L.I., a young white kid whose real name is Jesse Itzler. "Yeah, a lot people who hear that 'Go New York Go' assume that I must be black," he said.
For me, the twist is a rapper living in an East Side high-rise apartment. It goes against the grain of images portrayed by BET, MTV videos: glass-sprinkled vacant lots, alleys cluttered with graffiti. "Yeah, a lot of these guys are middle-class kids, went to college, the whole thing," Itzler said. "But they don't want you to know that. That's not part of the image. Face it, there's a lot of money to be made from this stuff, but you have to play a certain role. Tough guys, that sort of thing. I don't have a problem with that. They're trying to make a living."
While talking, Itzler popped into his VCR the "Go New York Go" video that Knicks fans associate with the team. The jingle became so popular that the Washington Bullets and the Charlotte Hornets asked Itzler and his partner, Dana Mozie, to customize a theme for them as well. For the Bullets, Itzler came up with "You the Man," and for Charlotte, "The Bugs are Back"
Sign up for the Sports Newsletter: Get our most ambitious projects, stories and analysis delivered to your inbox every week.
Outside the rap world and Knicks officials, few know who Jesse Jaymes is. "I was at a club last week and wanted to get in," Itzler recalled. "The bouncer had a Knicks' cap on, and I said, 'I wrote the Knicks' theme song.' He knew the names Jesse Jaymes but didn't think I was the guy. The bouncer told me to go catch a cab."
Itzler, 26, is the youngest of three children. His father is an entrepreneur, and his mother is president of the Roslyn board of education. "Everyone else is a lawyer or a doctor," he said about his neighbors. "We were sort of outcasts."
He attended American University, majoring in criminology. He met his partner, Mozie, in 1987. They hit it off immediately despite strikingly different backgrounds. Mozie, raised in the southeast section of Washington, was as streetwise as Itzler was suburban.
"P Street in D.C. is one of the worst areas in the city," Itzler said, adding that his exposure to street life strengthened his relationship with his partner. "Some of the things I saw, the things I experienced, the things we came through, really gave me a whole new perspective on life. He was committed to making it, and we worked well together."
The two completed a number of projects while Itzler was in school, and two weeks after graduation, he was signed to a record deal. That's when he went from being Jesse Itzler to Jesse Jaymes. "I hated it, to tell you the truth," he said. "They said 'You're Jesse Jaymes.' I couldn't think of anything better at the time."
Itzler got up and popped into the VCR his latest creation, "I'm a Knicks Fan." If "Go New York Go" was designed as a catchy sing-along, Itzler said, "Fan comes from the heart."
"I wrote it when the Knicks went through that stretch when they were .500," he said. "They'd lost a few games and everyone was saying, 'Aw, the Knicks. . . .?' To me the thing is, through good or bad if you're a Knicks fan you're down with the Knicks and that's the bottom line.
"I want the new song to be catchy, but I want it to have a message: I'm a Knicks fan whether they have Louis Orr in the starting rotation or Patrick Ewing. I'm a Giants fan, I'm a Rangers fan I'm a Yankees fan," Itzler said.
"I'm a New Yorker, man. I'm a Knicks fan."
