Leave it to Dave Tompkins to give us something surprising…

…like this Grantland piece on Nat Moore, NFL wide receiver and Miami Bass pioneer:

Nat Moore would be best remembered for his heliocentricity rather than for receiving the NFL’s first Man of the Year Award for providing “outstanding service” to a North Miami community decimated by riots, racism, and a highway. Kids who wanted to torch the seat of justice could enroll in one of the Dolphin youth football programs — or they could just skate backward to “Ring My Bell” at one of Nat Moore’s teen clubs.

What the NFL failed to recognize were Moore’s outstanding contributions to the birth of Miami bass, a rap extremity that enhanced player quality of life: spandex, jock jams, the strip club, the Luke party, the maximization of trunk space.1 This was the first hip-hop genre that appeared to be solely dedicated to fusing a subwoofer waveform with the human rear end, as if trying to develop a new biotechnology called Bottom, making these exaggerations of low end indistinguishable from each other.

[Photo Credit: How to Wreck a Nice Beach; Lovely Derriere]