Somewhere in the early 2010’s Ric Flair became relevant, again. All because of Killer Mike, The Indianapolis Colts and a generation of young men who suddenly found themselves as wealthy and influential as their idol, and as hip hop always told them they would become.
Today on HighLow, we explore the timeline of an undeniable return to relevancy for one of wrestling’s forefathers: Ric Flair, and why it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Later we’ll go into the why, but first…
The Timeline
2009 – Cam’Ron
2011 – Killer Mike
On May 17, 2011 Killer Mike releases PL3DGE with the song “Ric Flair” that opens with an epic quote from the man himself.
I’m going on tour, and I’m gonna show anybody out there that thinks for one second that maybe I’m second guessing myself, that I am the greatest of all time…forever and ever.
And so continued the trickle down of a thought, of an ethos, that summed up an a very particular time period for a very particular young man.
2012 – Pusha T
The next year Pusha T releases the excellent “What Dreams Are Made Of’ sampling what may now be the quintessential Ric Flair quote.
It’s so hard for me to sit back here, in this studio, looking at a guy out here hollering my name, when last year I spent more money on spilt liquor in bars from one side of this world to the other, than you made.
You talking to the Rolex wearing, diamond ring wearing, kiss stealing, whew, wheeling dealing, living the life, jet flying son of a gun. And I’m having a hard time, holding these alligators down.
2014 – The 49ers
Flair is invited to the locker room of the San Francisco 49ers to give a pep-speech to a soon-to-be-defeated-by-the-Packers team. A group of large, grown men laud over his ever word, tickled that their hero-uncle is live in the flesh.
2015 – The Colts
In a now-viral locker room celebration, Colts Safety Sergio Brown, after the Colts playoff win over the Cincinatti Bengals, recites the same tag Pusha T sampled in “What Dreams Are Made Of” with Flair level zest.
Sergio was asked to do his Ric Flair impression for his team time after time until…he left the Colts 2 months later.
2015 – Tory Lanez
2017 – 21 Savage
By 2017, rappers had learned their lesson. Don’t just use Ric Flair’s quotes, don’t just name your song “Ric Flair”, get Ric Flair in your video.
“Ric Flair Drip”, of all the videos in this list so far, is arguably the most important milestone in Ric Flair’s revival.
Killer Mike and Pusha T are from an older generation of Hip Hop. Both blew up in the early 2000s. 2001 (Mike’s verse on Outkast’s “The Whole World”) and 2002 respectively (Clipse’s classic album, Lord Willin’) and its possible you could see their love of Ric Flair as a nostalgia from a very specific timeframe: the rise of of the WWE and wrestling at large in the mid-to-late 80s.
Killer Mike and Pusha T have remained relevant long enough – much longer than most rappers – and in so doing have helped passed the Ric Flair torch to another generation.
And “Ric Flair Drip” is the definitive passing of the torch.
21 Savage, Offset and Metro Boomin are leaders of the newest school of hip hop and not only do they embrace Ric Flair, but do it to an arguably greater extent than their predecessors.
All of the 11 Rap Lyrics below occurred after 2008.
11 Notable Ric Flair Rap Lyrics:
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7526708/ric-flair-rap-lyrics
The Why Now? Pt. 1:
Rappers and (Sports) Ballers
“When you think about what he (Ric Flair) personifies…it’s basically rap. It’s the attitude…it’s the showmanship…it’s the smack talking” – Pusha T
In 2010, America saw the first generation of young black men who were rich, famous, and most importantly to Ric Flair’s relevance, raised during the rise of the World Wrestling Federation (the WWE as it’s known today) in the late 1980s.
Men who came of age in the last 2 decades lived in a completely post-Muhammad Ali and post-Hip Hop world.
It’s not just that a generation of men were influenced by these people and this music, it’s that my generation never lived in a world without them.
Young men in the early 2000s never knew a world where talking shit wasn’t a form of high art. Ali birthed it, and hip hop ran with it.
And this shit talking wasn’t just about skill.
Out-and-out pride in being rich hit all-new levels of douchbaggery in the 1980s.
This was the decade that gave the world Donald Trump, Gordon Gecko, shoulder pads, The Lives of The Rich & Famous, and Ronald Reagan.
It also gave us Ric Flair (more on that later).
The difference between those things and Ric Flair? Ric Flair made it cool. He made it cool in particular, to the hip hop generation, to the young men who did not look up to Gordon Gecko as some exalted anti-hero.
But this doesn’t answer the entire question.
Certainly, there were young, rich, famous black men before 2010.
Rappers could’ve been easily talking about Flair in the 90s, and some probably did.
But not like this. Not to this extent. Not to viral videos, locker room pep talks, music video cameos level.
So…why now, now?
The Why Now? Pt. 2:
Because America Almost Went Broke
There was a moment, a very fleeting one, in the year or so after the financial collapse of 2008 where America felt as though it might step back from the unfettered, bounding progress of Capitalism.
A moment where we looked in the mirror and were almost embarrassed by our economic self, where we almost noticed how having so much wealth up top was bad for our knees, not to mention our unsightly, worker-exploitation pockmarks.
There was a moment where even advertisers may have shied away from braggadocio.
Those days were as short lived as they are now long past. It seems that with the Dow average, so goes the image crisis.
But the fear…
The memory of being so close to the edge, still left a taste in our mouths.
With the stock market returning to pre-Great Recession strength on the backs of government bailouts –which didn’t do much for the purchasing power of the average working American – we were quickly, and once again, allowed to celebrate our excesses, to excess.
9.2.2008 Dow Jones at 11,516.92
3.2.2009 Dow Jones at 6,763.29
3.2.2010 Dow Jones at 10,405.98
5.17.2011 Killer Mike releases “Ric Flair”
And yet, the bitter taste remained.
By early 2010, we had just been on a wild, uncomfortable ride…but the stock market was back to “normal”, our leaders were calm, and the Super Bowl had zero nipples.
And so we were allowed to breath, having avoided the embarrassing self-examination that might have arisen from economic failure.
By 2010 America had been emotionally and financially exhausted by the compound stresses of 1) losing whatever investments we may have had (for those who could even afford to invest) and 2) the more existential, and possibly more daunting, prospect that our economy – the holy grail of capitalism – may not be all that it promised us it was.
Flair was able to wash away all those fears with a quick “woooooo”.
The 80s All Over Again
Ric Flair’s appeal is not only because Wall Street seems so strong and rich but because of our collective, relative economic strength seems so weak in comparison.
When times are hard, the “good life”, seems even gooder. The value of those with literal monetary value is even more valuable in times of want.
As mentioned earlier, think about when Flair first became popular.
On September 17, 1981, Flair beat Dusty Rhodes for his first NWA World Heavyweight Championship – and so started his run of multiple championships in the 1980s.
- Jun 1982: Dow Jones is at 2,082.7
- Jun 1991: Dow Jones is at 5,432.72
The Dow Jones rose over 150% in the 1980s, despite a 22% single day drop on Black Monday in 1987.
The 1980s was known for the expansive growth of the upper class and the continuing dismemberment of unions and liberal government policies that support the economic strength of the America’s working class.
And a more official recap of the match, should this video get the youtube boot.
Ric Flair’s popularity rose right along with the Dow Jones.
The 80s saw America rebounding from the image crisis of Vietnam, Richard Nixon’s criminality and Jimmy Carter’s depressing speeches with the macho swagger of Ronald “Make America Great Again” Reagan, an amateur hockey team victory over Russia, and The Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous.
The 80s might be summed up as a time when America’s self image inflated while American’s pocketbooks deflated.
Ric Flair personifies that inflated self image.
And when the 2010’s saw the income inequality gap widen it was like the 80s all over again.
The top 1 percent of families took home an average of 26.3 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent in 2015, according to a new paper released by the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. This has increased since 2013, showing that income inequality has risen in nearly every state.
Flair’s jewelry, coiffed hair, rhinestones and diamonds, along with his lyrical, unrepentant shit-talking and chest puffing, shoulder-first gate – in summary, his swag – is the living embodiment of “If You Got It, Flaunt It”.
Flair represents having everything you want and having the confidence to show it off.
Flair’s swagger is a “fuck you” type of rich and successful. It breaks all the Old Money, generationally-wealthy rules about expressing your wealth (see, the dad in Born Rich, or this link for an insight into those rules).
And Flair’s unwavering confidence was our collective comfort pillow when the entire American Dream was briefly, and fleetingly, called into question in 2008.
So Ric Flair is popular again because of Killer Mike, and Pusha T, and Sergio Brown, and the recession of 2008 but Ric Flair resonates with us, and his relevancy continues, because Ric Flair helps us deal with those moments of insecurity in a very American way.
Specifically: if you got it, flaunt it.
(And if you don’t got it, flaunt until you do).
WOOOOOOO!