It has been a bit since I have last updated this. I am in the process of doing another review but I am debating between another movie soundtrack album, a compilation or an individual album from a rapper or group. Just recently, something came to mind that involved rappers, and it also involved Voltron.
For those unfamiliar with this, Voltron was an animated series from the 1980’s that involved a team of astronauts who piloted these robotic vehicles that looked like lions and then formed a super robot called, you guessed it, Voltron. I have watched maybe a handful of episodes of the original series on Toonami, which was a block on Cartoon Network that aired some action cartoons like Jonny Quest, Thundercats, and anime series. I didn’t grow up watching this show, but from what I recall, it seemed entertaining. I must add that there were other series of this after the original.
Back in 1998, Sprite released a series of commercials that involved Voltron and the hip-hop culture. If you want to see them, look below:
What was interesting about these ads were that each of the lions had a rapper (and also group) representing areas.
Blue Lion – Goodie Mob, representing the South.
Green Lion – Fat Joe, representing the East Coast.
Red Lion – Common, representing the Midwest.
Yellow Lion – Mack 10, representing the West Coast.
Black Lion – Afrika Bambaataa, the leader of the team representing hip-hop as a whole, as he was one of the pioneers of the culture and a legendary rapper.
I know that this was not the only ad campaign that Sprite did that involved rappers, as a year after, they did one with female rappers and martial arts films, which I will touch on soon.
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