Politics & Government

Lil B Pays Rap Homage to Late Skateboarder

Lil B has a new rap with a video set at the Walnut Creek Skate Park, where Tucker Hacking was a regular. Hacking died Jan. 29 after a skateboard accident.

The story of a 20-year-old Walnut Creek man who died last week in a skateboard accident touched the heart of rapper Lil B of Berkeley.

A new Lil B song means a national airing for the story of Tucker Hacking and the drive to rename the Walnut Creek Skate Park for him. The You Tube video of Lil B's "I Own Swag" is filmed at the skate park on Marchbanks Drive, adjacent to Heather Farm Park. (And warning to parents: You might want to prevent the little ones from listening to this rap because it's got plenty of obscenities.)

In the video, Lil B strolls the skate park in business attire with a patterned blue shirt and pink tie. He chats with some skateboarders at the park where Hacking was a regular known as THacks. The video shows a glimpse of a newspaper article about Hacking's death Jan. 29, two days after he fell from a skateboard on Juanita Drive on the border of Walnut Creek and Lafayette.

Lil B, 22, is known for solo work and recording with the group the Pack.

The organizers of a Facebook site, "Help Create Tucker Hacking Memorial Skate Park," have said they plan to present a petition to the Walnut Creek City Council on Tuesday, Feb. 21. The Facebook petition was climbing toward 1,500 signatures Monday.

Hacking's former employer, Play-Well TEKnologies (which teaches engineering to children), has announced a Tucker Hacking Scholarship Fund. Play-Well says it set up the Tucker Hacking Just Have Fun Scholarship Fund at his family's request.

There are some wonderful biographical details about Hacking on the Play-Well website. In a bio for job showing youngsters how to engineer things with Lego blocks, Hacking wrote: "My main goal in life is to be a surf instructor in the Mentawais Islands (Indonesia). Although this is a very distant goal, another one closer to reality would be for me to become an owner of a fortune 500 company or an 8th grade history teacher."

Thanks to Patch reader Jeffrey Nash for alerting us to the Lil B video.


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