I could not be in any sense of the word, described as cool. As much I wish I could, I’m not someone who could ever use “Yay Area” the way it’s supposed to be meant, I’m more of a “Bay Area” in terms of coolness.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I do like stuff from the Yay, and well, I bought Yay Area’s Finest Volume 2 mainly because it was…from the Yay.
Buying this DVD was a lot harder than it should have been. Coming from an e-commerce background in the US, I’m just amazed at how difficult it was. I ended up getting the DVD over this past Christmas when I was in the US, but I had been trying to get it since summer 2006, before I had even left for Vietnam. Their official MySpace account said to go to Rasputin to get it. Not only did Rasputin (Los Gatos one) not have it, however, they didn’t even know what I was talking about. Impossible to find on EBay or through Google search.
I eventually had to log in my MySpace account (I rarely do this on my own) late last year and send them a personal message, to which I actually got a quick reply directing me to Rapbay.com, which seems to be dead at the moment, but worked for me in October. Sigh.
Anyway, on to the actual DVD.
Official Trailer:
There’s a lot of footage on this DVD. And I mean a ton. The DVD focuses on local Bay Area streetball (to their credit, they have a lot of footage from all over the Bay, not just 3-4 locations) and high school basketball. Here’s a quick description taken from the official site:
“But last but not least I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask for more shine. Some of the YAY AREA’S FINEST still need some love in the mag: My dude Devon Hardin from Cal is finna be a lottery pick in a year after he wrecks the PAC-10, the guy Terrence Jennings outta Sac destroyed the summer circuit and has climbed into the top 20 of the high school class of ‘08, another dude to watch for is my boy Wendell Mckines out of Richmond on his way to New Mexico State (if u never heard of him, watch the DVD, he’s the guy who clears dude’s head on the tip dunk at the end of a chapter and the reverse tip-dunk on the end of the “Bang It” chapter), couple other names of note: HS players: Frank Otis, DJ Seely, Reeves Nelson, Matt Simpkins, Ramon Eaton (some say he’s the 1 freshman in the country outta Sacramento), Chris Brew, Jared Cunningham, Collin Chiverton, Kelly Kaigler, Tyree McCrary, and the list goes on. College: Demarcus Nelson (Duke), Rogdrick Craig (Son of 49ers legend, coming back from a heart condition to play for Texas Tech), Kyle Spain (San Diego State), Dior Lowhorn (USF), Eli Holman (Indiana incoming freshman), too many more to name; Other dudes: Ballaholic, Moses “Ghost” Keys (killed in the and1 game), Exile, Sante aka 757, Drew Gooden, Drew Gordon (I see yall hatin on him online in the HS rankings, watch the DVD, he’s got about 75 clips on there, all freshman and sophomore year), can you tell I could go on and on all day? I just got so much pride in my region, and I’m trying to see my guys shine like they should. But anyways, yall ain’t gotta print this, or listen to any of my suggestions, just enjoy that DVD and know we doin it in the Bay. Thanks for the years of good work by the way. Gone.“
There are a bit too many segment introductions by famous and semi-famous (you probably need to be from the Bay Area to know at least a few of the names) rappers and basketball players. The footage itself is of decent quality, but this DVD just doesn’t resonate with quality in terms of production and editing.
My sister watched a little bit of the DVD with me, and while she’s not really a big basketball fan, she said, “this seems like something you might want to watch just because we’re from the Bay Area, but even then, there isn’t really a reason to watch this again.”
I agree perfectly.
A ton of footage (1.5 hrs), but a bit too much because it’s not edited and mixed well. Most of the footage isn’t that great and a lot of the DVD is just boring. I think that’s more of an issue of pacing than anything. Another issue is that I know a lot of hot players are in this, but the editors never highlight who you’re looking at, so you can’t get excited, “Oh, so that’s Drew Gordon” and so on. I remember reading a big list of who’s in this, but I don’t know when they actually get shown. I want to know who’s doing what! Since the chapters are named by song, I wasn’t sure if there were any themes in footage attached to a specific song. It’s extremely difficult to distinguish among them, which creates another problem for replayability- who is in and what happens in each section.
In the end, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless you’re a die hard Bay Area basketball fan, maybe not even then. They do some good things here, but it’s hard to watch. I hope they have some major changes for the next round, Volume 3, which has been “coming soon” for a long time (6+ months).
