From Snoop to Flavor Flav and breaking, American hip-hop is winning the Paris Olympics

The Olympic Games in Paris saw a major historical moment this past Monday when U.S. gymnasts Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles joined Brazil's Rebeca Andrade to create the first all-Black gymnastics medalist podium in the event's modern history.

Chiles, who won the bronze medal, and Biles, who took silver, flanked Andrade as she stepped to the gold medalist’s platform, bowing in coordination as she threw both hands in the air. Days after that image whipped around the world, little has bested it in the competition for defining photograph of these Summer Games.

NBC couldn’t have predicted that moment despite heavily promoting Biles’ comeback. But there were some things on which it could confidently place bets like the reliable virality of Snoop Dogg.

The hip-hop statesman gifted NBC one of the few ticks in the win column of its disastrous coverage of the 2021 summer games in Toyko when he and Kevin Hart freestyle riffed on clips from the day’s competition.

None were as memorable as Snoop’s outstanding reaction to the equestrian competition known as dressage, with its horses dancing rhythmically to music. It was love at first sight for the rap star. “This horse is off the chain! I gotta get this [expletive] in a video,” adding that its sideward steps resembled his signature crip-walk.

“Horse crip-walking is officially in the Olympics!” Kevin Hart screamed.

Three years later I am sad to report it is not. But for the first time breaking is, and we’d be shocked if Snoop weren’t in the stands to cheer on the B-boys and B-girls. While Snoop is a West Coast hip-hop star, breaking began in New York, home to Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav – another popular Paris Olympics patron.

His and Snoop Dogg’s prominent facetime throughout a globally viewed and spiritually unifying TV event signals the influence hip-hop has in all corners of culture more than half a century after its founding, especially professional sports.

Hip-hop and professional basketball have been intertwined since the genre’s birth, and both raised some of their greatest talents in city parks as modes of expression. Sure enough, part of Snoop’s social media mission took him on the U.S. basketball team’s bus to hobnob with Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and other court superstars.

But it’s the sports that tend to receive lesser attention and have fewer non-white athletes (badminton being an exception) where their presence has garnered the most attention.

Snoop and his real-life friend and TV co-star Martha Stewart were on-hand for the Paris dressage competition kitted out in full equestrian gear. Later they sat down for a prime-time collaboration as the knowledgeable Stewart walked the audience through terms they probably don’t care about and Snoop, sitting beside her, respectfully imitated the sideward gait with a grin on his face.

Sequels to viral moments never perform as well as the original; besides, in 2024 Snoop has plenty of Olympics content to choose from. He swam with Michael Phelps, ran on the track and danced with Biles and Chiles from the stands. Do you want to watch the Doggfather meet a French bulldog . . . in France? Yeah, but this time around the clip everyone quotes shows Snoop commentating on the July 28 U.S.-China badminton match.

“As you see, it don’t stop ‘til the casket drop. They’re rockin’ and rollin’, back and forth, ‘Gimme that, No, I need that. Nope, over here. Nope, over there. What about over there . . . Nope, sit down. Wait a minute, hold on . . . Get out the way! Move! I told you, we need that.’”

Every Olympics is a celebrity playground, but summer in Paris has been a rich environment for free-range sighting of the famous. No shocker there; attracting the wealthy and famous doesn’t take much effort when the games are set in one of the world’s glamour capitals.

But Snoop’s omnipresence in this Olympics is intentional, with NBC having hired him as its broadcasts’ official mascot for a reported but not confirmed $500,000 a day. If that’s true, it’s fair to ask why NBC isn’t also paying the rent for American athletes under financial duress.

Compared to the black eye the broadcast networks and its streaming service Peacock sustained for its chatty and unfocused performance in 2021, and the extent to which Snoop’s charm offensive is succeeding, the investment is paying off.

Tokyo’s underwhelming viewership is attributable to multiple factors, many having to do with its telecast during the pandemic. Delayed by a year, the 2021 Games had no live audiences, and the Japanese government barred protests and other large gatherings.

It was also marred by NBC’s inability to figure out how to best deploy its production ground forces or bridge the massive time delay between live events and primetime telecasts. "Viewers have been able to see everything at any given moment (provided you have the Peacock streaming service) while understanding fundamentally nothing about what’s going on," Aaron Timms’ said in his 2021 analysis for The Guardian.

Three years afterward the world is in a slightly better mood, and the time difference between New York and Paris is much briefer. U.S. audiences can watch live coverage on Peacock during the day and take in major competitions on-demand or view them in full during primetime. Its sportscasters are more judicious with their verbosity this time around too.

But it has been its star commentators who have stolen the show, led by Snoop and his endless supply of custom t-shirts emblazoned with the faces of his favorite Olympians, usually hidden under tracksuits until there’s a camera nearby to capture the reveal.

Flav’s enthusiasm is not as staged, making news-grabbing moves like his guarantee to help American discus thrower Veronica Fraley pay her rent come off as legitimately generous and in the Games’ spirit of comity.

Viewership for 12 days of primetime coverage on NBC, Peacock, and NBCUniversal’s cable channels is up 77% from the Tokyo Games, according to NBC’s report based on Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics. Nielsen also indicates its primetime telecasts are topping 13 million viewers each night across NBC and USA Network.

Given the revived audience interest in live TV over the past year or two, NBC likely would have bested its Tokyo numbers quite easily without its Snoop Dogg partnership. But it doesn’t hurt.

Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, is as beloved around the world as hip-hop itself. Each time he appears in the Olympics stands is an event unto itself from the looks of it, but the greater publicity boon is in the attention he brings to certain sports and players.

Stranger and equally as wonderful are Flavor Flav’s enthusiastic shout-outs to the USA women's water polo Olympic team, part of a five-year sponsorship deal casting him as its official hype man as well as the booster for the men’s national teams.

Flav, born William Jonathan Drayton Jr., served that role in the seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy before emerging as a reality star in the aughts via Season 3 of “The Surreal Life,” from which spun off “Strange Love,” where he romanced Brigitte Nielsen, and MTV’s “Flavor of Love.”

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Calling his fame trajectory weird in the 2000s was accurate, but his current support of the American water polo team is entirely wholesome — and although it has the appearance of an odd bedfellows situation, it happened quite organically. In May Flavor Flav saw an Instagram post from the team’s U.S. captain Maggie Steffens where she spoke about her team’s financial struggles despite their three gold medal victories before these games.

A communication ensued, and the result was a five-year sponsorship deal that includes his contributing a financial contribution whose total remains undisclosed, along with giving $1,000 to each member of the team as well as paying for a cruise vacation for them and their families.

Flavor Flav must have the resources to do this, but he’s probably not Jay-Z or Dr. Dre wealthy. To that point, like Snoop, he’s mainly there to pull in eyeballs, although Flav's stated goal is to bring attention to sports and athletes who aren’t natural public magnets.

This weekend’s face-off between b-boy and b-girl teams from countries around the world probably won’t have much difficulty with pulling in viewers, but having Snoop and Flav in the house can only make the spectacle that much hotter.

Their presence would also augment a spellbinding stop in a journey that dates back to 1982 when one of the first groups of breakers made their Paris debut.

Forty-two years later, and during a Games that began with Snoop Dogg carrying the Olympic torch, the best of the best will battle for medals, possibly with two godfathers of the music that moves them bearing witness. And we can’t wait to hear what they have to say about it.

The Paris Olympics breaking competition streams at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT on Friday, Aug. 9 and Saturday, Aug. 10 on Peacock and NBCOlympics.com.