Neknominate twist has Halifax hip-hop artists giving back
Some members of the Halifax area’s hip-hip community are upping the ante on an online video drinking challenge called “neknominate,” using it as a platform to give back to their community.
Neknominate involves people recording themselves chugging or “necking” booze, often doing something else extreme. Then they nominate others to out-drink them.
There are hundreds of videos of people neknominating on YouTube and Facebook, some with more than 100,000 views.
One example shows a man drinking beer from a toilet while being held upside down then nominating friends to perform the challenge. In another, a man chugs an entire 750 millilitre bottle of vodka.
Adrian Morris is a local hip-hop artist in Halifax. He is also a producer and a drummer who plays with Neon Dreams, Quake Matthews, and Cam Smith — to name a few.
Morris said when he first heard of neknominate, he thought it was “juvenile.”
“I wanted to take a spin on that. I saw a video of a guy in South Africa who approached a homeless person, gave him roughly about $10 worth of food, and nominated two of his friends to go ahead and do the same thing and one-up him,” he said.
After being nominated by his step-brother, Morris decided to change the rules of neknominate, saying he would rather donate items to the local food bank and “put energy into something good.”
In his video, Morris shows the items he planned to donate to the food bank and then chugged a beer. He said the beer part wasn’t necessary but that he wanted people to click on the video thumbnail and watch.
He then nominated producer Corey LeRue, also known as DJ LeRue. In addition to being a producer and DJ, he's also a member of Neon Dreams and he's the owner of TMG Studios on Barrington Street.
LeRue — who doesn’t drink — followed Morris’s cue, showed his food bank donations, chugged a ginger ale and nominated someone else.
“I think that it’s definitely started something that’s going to give a little bit of a different approach to it and hopefully, maybe, inspire some people to continue with this — maybe change some opinions on youth and people in the hip-hop community,” said LeRue.
“Every year more people in Nova Scotia are in need of the food banks and it seems like every year less donations are coming in … It’s not even a matter of big dollars, every little bit counts and i think we really want to inspire the youth of today to give to those who are less fortunate.”
Morris said he has seen 18 or 19 people taking part — with one person as far away as Barcelona, Spain, directly connected to his giving-back twist on neknominate.
