Posted by “Ball so hard, ball so hard”: that private jet scene in the movie Lift got everyone curious, what’s the mentioned song?
It’s a minor curiosity, but it took enough space in the plot of the movie Lift to trigger everyone’s curiosity. It’s a specific moment in the film, when Cyrus and Abby are in Mollsen’s private jet, and the millionaire shows them all the features of his plane. The giant display under the aircraft is a tool that will be used in a crucial moment in the second part of the movie, but in that moment, Mollsen prefers to use it with famous lines from the rap songs he loves. And that’s when he starts singing, “Ball so hard, ball so hard,” creating a bit of embarrassment.
So what’s the “ball so hard” mimed by Mollsen in the private jet scene of the movie Lift? It’s a very famous rap song released in 2011 by Jay-Z and Kanye West, Ni**as in Paris. You can listen to it in full streaming below.
In the song, the two American rappers continuously repeat the line “ball so hard” from the beginning until the end. It’s an urban expression with a specific meaning: when you say you ball so hard, you may imply you are really good at something, you party hard, or you have wild sex. In the song, the line “I ball so hard, motherf**rs wanna fine me” refers to something that happened to Jay-Z in 2011: the New Jersey Nets were fined $50.000 because Jay-Z was visiting the players in their locker room. That was against the NBA rule that prohibits team personnel from having contact with players who are not yet eligible for draft. You can read more about it in this old article on ESPN.com.
The line comes from Jay-Z’s comment about that occasion, so the meaning was, “I party so hard, I do such crazy things that they end up fining me.” In the movie Lift, Mollsen repeats the line “ball so hard” in front of Cyrus and Abby, using the same meaning. Cyrus is interpreted by Kevin Hart, who looks uncomfortable seeing Mollsen, the typical rich white guy, imitating a classic example of black rap music. That makes the scene hilarious: Cyrus keeps telling Mollsen, “you don’t need to do that, we understood,” but that clumsy dance goes on anyway.
Rap fans quickly identified the reference, but many average viewers didn’t catch the “ball so hard” hint in the Lift movie. If you belonged to the second category, well, now you know.
