What makes the still popular US pastime of ghost riding the whip so adaptable is that it is the ultimate all-American type past time that everyone can do, or at least relate to; one that is based around the automobile. The auto, the car, the ride, the whip -- whatever you call it, since the 1950's when young rebellious Americans first started getting their own wheels and the automatic freedom that came with it, has gained its own subculture. And this auto subculture has been closely linked with music, sex, alcohol, drugs, and (of course) driving stunts. 

And ghost riding the whip, which has been extremely popular the past two years, is the current offshoot of this ever-evolving auto American pop culture. Since last year it has gotten a lot of sensationalist mainstream coverage which has only fueled its popularity and as a result flooded YouTube with lots of "ghost riding the whip" video clips being posted daily.

How to ghost ride the whip: "the whip" is the car, the ride, and "ghost ride" is how it is driven -- by the ghost, meaning that the car drives itself and the driver hops out of the drivers seat to sit on the hood or run around the car and tries not to crash, and if s/he does, then tries to remember what type of auto insurance s/he (though predominantly a male past time) has. S/he may also need medical insurance.

The soundtrack to ghost riding is Bay Area hyphy rap, which directly helped fuel its current popularity, including such faves as Mista F.A.B.'s "Ghost Ride It" (video below) and, of course, E40 and the Federation as featured in the ebaum's world video clip below with the crashes (when ghost riders attack). These ghost-ridin' songs are the latest in a long tradition of Bay rap that celebrates illegal car activity and is rooted in the beloved but outlawed tradition of sideshows, long an ingrained part of underground urban Bay Area culture, with songs such as 415's  single "Sideshow"  (featuring Richie Rich and from the album 41Fiven), reflecting the illegal car activities back in the late eighties.

Imagine for a moment if Tony Soprano lived not in NJ but in da Bay. This is exactly what Bay Area resident, YouTube member, and local hip-hop artist EmceeT visualized before he went out and shot and edited (directed by ZTY Media) the inspired above video clip, spoofing the intro to the popular, and sadly defunct, HBO series The Sopranos. In the "Yay" version Emcee T (aka The Chinese King of the Bay)  winds his way through various parts of the Bay Area in his whip with cigar (or blunt?) in mouth, and capturing along the way shots of such familar sights as the Bay Bridge and its toll-booth, the Caldecott tunnel, that big ole bow-and-arrow sculpture & the palm trees along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, the Martinez Oil refineries, the Showgirls Strip Club, Casino San Pablo, Oakland Port, the infamous Mac Dre mural (off Harrison Street in SF), SFPD patrol cars, Lake Merritt mural, and at the end (in true Tony Soprano style), Emcee T's own house. Click here for more of Emcee T's videos, here for his MySpace, and for general info on "the real emcee" Emcee T, visit his website.

And in case you want to compare it with the original shot in New Jersey, it's below for your viewing pleasure. By the way, the song used in the Sopranos intro is by the group A3 and is titled (not too surprisingly) "Woke Up This Morning." The full version, which is available on the Sopranos soundtrack (look for it at Amoeba Music) is a really great song with a nice slow build-up and then towards the end it goes into a rap, clocking in at about five plus minutes compared to the television show intro version which is a bit under two minutes.  

Rap & Rock Stars More likely to die Prematurely

You ever notice how everytime you open a paper or read this  AMOEBLOG that it seems that yet another famous celebrity you
grew up listening to has passed on? And how it seems like the
ratio of rockers or rappers compared to regular folk 
dropping off the face of the earth is much greater? Well, it 
doesn't just appear that way. It is that way. According to a
newly published British based study, according to Reuters, 
rap and rock music stars -- "already notorious for their 
so-called 'crash and burn' lifestyles really are more likely
than other [regular everyday] people to die before reaching old age." 

All of this is proven by the study of more than a thousand mainly British and
American artists, spanning the time from Elvis Presley's era  up until two years ago (the years 1956 to 2005) in which the
study found these musician stars were "two to three times more
likely to suffer a premature death than the general population."
 
The study's results showed that between 
1956 and two years ago there
were a hundred deaths among the 
1,064 musicians examined by researchers
at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool
John Moores University.