Rip, Pack & Slab joins ‘The Chase’

By David Yarger

Co-Host ‘The Chase’

What a Friday and what a week finale for “The Chase” today. It was a loaded episode with a ton going on in the hobby and we had our guys Rip, Pack & Slab on the broadcast. If you don’t know much about the group, you should get to learning, because they’re one of the most creative groups the hobby has to offer. 

A lot of content creators like to have their own spin of how they represent themselves in the hobby, or what they do in the hobby. Well, RPS creates their own music with lyrics regarding the hobby. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1366&v=HUGiDJFko70&feature=youtu.be

The group is a family, which includes former NFL running back Jahvid Best as Rip Hamiltops, Peter Packman and Slabby Sosa. Not only do they have creative names with hobby references, but their lyrics also include any card terminology you could think of. 

To begin, Packman said Best was the one who made it possible to get RPS going. He added himself and Sosa have collected for their whole lives. Furthermore, they decided they wanted to put a little spin on their hobby experience and began doing movie skits. This was during the pandemic, and once Best realized what was going on with the hobby and noticed the skits, he jumped on board. Best was making music beats at the time and eventually sent one to the group and told them to make a song. After sending them a beat with a hook, they created a song and as Best said, “next thing you know, we’re Rip, Pack & Slab.”

Best added that he got into the hobby because of Pack and Slab but remembered the times as a player he would have to go and sign. 

“I had no idea that people were buying these cards, people wanted these cards, people were trading them. I had no idea what was going on. To me, it was just a deal and I get a check and sign as many as I can,” Best said with a laugh. 

Best said, when the first song dropped, his DM’s began to flood with card accounts and people sending his old cards and that they wanted more tunes. 

Pack added that the songs and skits are a cool way to show the community you can intertwine something you love and make it interesting. 

“You can be interested in what you’re interested in and make it look cool and sound cool, too. Originally, I feel like it started off as a family thing for the pandemic, for us to grow and create and just have fun together. We didn’t care if anybody else liked it, we were laughing and having fun,” Pack said. “We know we have to lead. Now it’s on us to lead this, so somebody else can come and do it greater than we ever did it.”

A fun fact too, about the group, is the three didn’t start making songs until they collaborated together, so that first song was their first crack at music. 

They added, people have asked them to do non-hobby related songs, and Pack added they take it as a compliment, but they love educating listeners on the hobby via their lyrics. 

As three African American men in a hobby where the ideological collector is white males, RPS admitted, the hobby does have some work to do in regard to inclusivity and including people of different races, sexes and more.

Slab said, “You’re asking the question, so I think that’s the answer right there, pretty much. For lack of better words, the hobby does a bad job of being inclusive. For the majority of the players to be black that are on these cards and for when you go to card shows you see so little, not just black, but you don’t see a lot of kids, you don’t see no engagement with the women … you don’t see a lot of black people at these shows. (Sometimes) the hobby doesn’t do a good job of making people feel welcomed.”

He added that a big part of their music is creating a bridge to help others who may not know about the hobby and maybe get their minds turning towards, “Hey, this is something I’m interested in.” Additionally, he said he didn’t want to make it seem the hobby was so bad, because the group was shown a lot of love when they began getting into the hobby.

“There are some great people in the hobby, who like Pack said, use their privilege to help others. It’s not just all bad. I do see some progression,” Slab said.

Best added, he doesn’t think the hobby was ready for the number of eyes that came immediately during the pandemic, but overall, education will help the hobby for years to come.

Adding on, Pack mentioned how the group also coaches youth sports and is involved in community work, so they get to teach kids about real life scenarios, as well as experiences they have seen in the hobby. 

“We get to teach them about real life things,” Pack said. “We get to take a community of kids and use these experiences we have experienced in the hobby, good and bad as far as inclusivity, and show the kids like real life lessons. … Before we go into the cards, we go into the life skills and how you should treat people. We put the cards to the side (and say) this is how you should treat people. We can take this dynamic, because we’ve been in it, and this is how they treat us, this is how we treat others and teach it from there like, ‘hey, we shouldn’t treat people like this, we should treat people like this.’ ”

And with all the roles the group takes on in life between jobs, coaching, community work and more, they said seeing how the hobby music has impacted the hobby and people in it has kept them driven to continue producing tunes. 

RPS then gave “The Chase” a debut freestyle that was a first-time thing for the group. You can check that out, as well as the whole interview by clicking here.

Additionally, for more on Rip, Pack & Slab, visit their website, Instagram and stream their music on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music.

Also on “The Chase” …

Also on the show, we pulled Wednesday’s new release WWE Impeccable. There were some nice hits including a Lita auto, Trish Stratus metal auto out of 10 and then the big “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes troy ounce silver out of 35. In order to win these cards, comment on the YouTube video who had the best entrance music in wrestling history. A winner will be announced on Monday.