MUSIC DON'T LIE VOL. 2 - RASUAL BUTLER

PICTURE THIS AMERICA. you're some loser boy, some real bottom-of-the-barrell dingus, who spends his time in the late 90s watching atlantic-10 basketball. your only hope is to one day play in the same arena that your heroes are slam-dunking in on a nightly basis. AND WHAT A COLLECTION OF PLAYERS TO CHOOSE FROM : james "CAN I GET A RIP" posey from xavier, ken "IS THAT A MCRIB" aponte from fordham, and malik "LETS BURN THIS FUCKER DOWN" moore from temple. i am not exaggerating when i say that it was the best time to be alive. 

but you're HIP, GOD DAMMIT. you can't just like the team that all the other kids at school like, no, you're DIFFERENT. you need to follow a lesser known school than rhode island. YOU NEED TO BE DIFFICULT. so you scour through the a-10 box scores on a daily basis, carefully keeping tabs on which team has lost the most amount of games by the largest margin. after a grueling few months, you stand before your decision and smile on affectionately. you have chosen the la salle explorers, led by their undersized swing-man, rasual butler.

AND HE'S GOOD TOO. good enough to be drafted in the second round of the nba draft, at least. you feel like you just discovered soundgarden in some dingy bar in seattle, believing yourself to be the only person in america, let alone the north east, that gives two fucks about rasual butler. over the course of the 2000's, rasual's skills slowly diminish, but your devotion stays strong. "JUST WAIT," you shout, "HE'S BEEN FOOLING EVERYONE. HE'S JUST PLAYING POORLY SO IT'S THAT MUCH MORE AMAZING WHEN HE BREAKS OUT AND SCORES A COOL 48 AGAINST STOCKTON!"

finally, in 2008, he re-invents himself as a pin-point scorer from downtime, being a necessary cog for a playoff new orleans hornets team (CHRIS PAUL CAN YOU HEAR ME?). now it's not just you who is keeping notes on rasual butler, BUT THE INTERNET ITSELF. someone even takes the time to create a mix-tape in his honor. "WHAT A JOYOUS DAY," you muse, "but.. i do wonder what they could have chosen to be the background music of the video. well, with someone of his skill set and such a little-known background, it has to something like sonic youth, right? maybe they'll go a little more mainstream and throw in some modest mouse but i couldn't think of anything else. no, no, i couldn't dream of it."

ladies and gentlemen, "BOW WOW" BUTLER

MUSIC DON'T LIE VOL.1 - ZYDRUNAS ILGAUSKAS

you ever watch a mark blount highlight mixtape on youtube and the music is on some 311 shit and you can't help but think, "fuck man, how can i get fired up for these weak-side put backs when this noise is playing"?

don't even sweat it bray, we got your back. we at paul dont lie want to expose our readers to mixtapes that work. mixtapes where the music in the background matches the soul of the player in the foreground. mixtapes that leave you SMILIN' AND COMING BACK FOR MORE ERR'TIME. we want it so that the next time your watching a tyler hansbrough video that has john popper blowin' that harm in the background, you'll think "no, thank you paul don't lie."

for the first entry in our series, we have the lithuanian great khali, "big z" zydrunas ilgauskas. unlike most other crackas in the nba, z is neither a pretty boy nor a flop artist. no, big z is just a mediocre big man with two bad feet and a bad case of 'juice head.

so, i ask you, who else could soundtrack his mixtape than someone who lists his record label as "self employed thank you very much" on myspace?

 

lets go laugh at jeremy piven and drink soda and die.