Before skate rap became a thing with names like Jereme Rogers, Pharrell Williams, Jaden Smith and Dashawn Jordan, there was already someone holding it down, wearing oversized skate clothes, spitting rhymes and skating hard in the streets. That was Ali G.
For a lot of skaters who grew up in the late Nineties and early 2000s, Ali G fit right into the era. Baggy pants, giant hoodies, skate shoes, chains, and a mix of hip hop and skate style made the character feel like someone who could have easily been hanging around a skatepark trying to bum a cigarette or asking if anyone had a spare board.
It was all a joke, but it worked because skate culture has always had room for weird personalities.
If you think back to the Piss Drunx days, skateboarding was full of party culture. Drinking, smoking weed, punk rock, rap, late nights, broken boards, and skate rats sleeping wherever they could all came with the territory.
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Weed and skateboarding have crossed paths for decades, so seeing Ali G joking about selling weed almost feels like something straight out of that era.
Ali G iz back, not skate legend Ali Boulala. Yes, we know! But it’s skater rapper Ali motherfucking G!
Over the weekend, Hollywood actor Sacha Baron Cohen showed up at the Wimbledon men's final dressed as his famous character, just days after reports surfaced that filming had wrapped on a brand new Ali G movie.
Cohen also launched an official Ali G Instagram account and posted a video from the Wimbledon crowd.
Staying completely in character, Ali G called tennis "the crap version of ping pong" before announcing that he planned to sell as much weed as he could during the match.
The caption stayed true to the character's style.
"And if u iz at dis borin wimbledore final lookin 2 get grand slammed, I iz here wif de hookup."
Of course, it was all part of the joke.
News about the new movie surfaced only a few days before the Wimbledon appearance.
Hollywood trade publications confirmed that Cohen had completed filming another Ali G film, although almost nothing else has been revealed. Like many of Cohen's projects, production stayed under wraps, and there is still no official release date.
It has been quite a while since Ali G has made a public appearance.
Cohen briefly brought him back on The Tonight Show in 2024 during a comedy sketch featuring Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Before that, he unexpectedly appeared as Ali G during the 2016 Academy Awards, catching organizers completely off guard.
For all the core heads, Ali G has always felt oddly cool.
He looked like every poser hanging around the skatepark pretending to know everyone, wearing oversized skate gear, talking trash, and acting like he had everything figured out.
Ali G may have been making fun of the scene, but he also became part of the era that many skaters still remember today.