It was October of 1988, and the Philadelphia Eagles were headed to their first NFC East title since the 1980 season. It didn’t seem like it at the time, though. Philadelphia finished the month 4-5, and New York, Washington, and Phoenix were all ahead of them in the standings.
That did not stop the crew at West Coast Video. With the team in fourth place in the division, the Philadelphia-based video rental chain pitched Eagles players on an idea—a rap song performed by the team, similar to the Chicago Bears' “Super Bowl Shuffle” three years earlier. Those Bears won the Super Bowl, and the song was nominated for an R&B Grammy, so it inspired a lot of imitators. Most were similar group raps by the team, but things did get weird around the margins. Bears coach Mike Ditka himself put out two different songs on VHS. The Cleveland Browns made a sci-fi short, D.T. in Dawg Territory, among other mini-movies.
The Eagles went the more direct route with "Buddy’s Watchin’ You," a reference to the team's no-nonsense coach Buddy Ryan. The song is not a parody, although it does obviously reference Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watchin’ Me.” Director Gary Delfiner, according to reporting in the Inquirer at the time, put everything together for around $20,000 starting in late October of that season. Buddy Siegler and Eugene “Lambchop” Curry wrote the music and lyrics. A local lawyer got Eagles star Mike Quick on the phone, and the receiver rounded up 10 other players to rap on the track.
The VHS cost $9.99, with 50 cents from each tape going to Eagles Fly For Leukemia. The video included the song and a mini-doc about the making of the song, which was basically the same format as the Super Bowl Shuffle. Both were recorded in mid-November, and the tape was for sale at store locations not long after. At the time, West Coast Video was huge, advertising itself as the largest video rental chain in the world, and the tape sold thousands of copies. And then the Eagles went on a winning streak! They won six of their last seven regular-season games to finish 10-6 and win the division. You probably can’t credit the song for the team’s success, but also maybe you can. Why not?
There is no spoiler here: The 11 players who rap on the track are almost universally terrible. (Rapper Chill Moody once did a thorough analysis of each verse.) But the video itself is delightful! It is as if “We Are The World” was done by a bunch of football players who have never heard or possibly even heard of music before, with the production value you can only get from a retail chain that rents videos other people produce. To me, Randall Cunningham is easily the most polished performer; Keith Jackson seems to be having the most fun. Teammates clown on Reggie White and Jerome Brown. Unwilling to remove his hat, Andre Waters has to wear his headphones upside down when he records his verse. The team’s kicker has the best verse of all:
Luis Zendejas, I kick field goals
Am I nervous? Yeah, I suppose
Win the game by hitting the mark
This game’s over before it starts
The players have little one-liners. “I backed up Luther Vandross once,” Cunningham says. “Yeah, you backed him up from the stands,” Jackson replies. Reggie White told the Inquirer: “I'm gonna do a preacher rap video.” Indeed, his verse was a religious rap:
Reggie White, defensive end
Hit quarterbacks like they committed a sin
Like a good minister, when I’m through
I help them up and say, “God bless you”
Credit where it’s due, that is pretty good! He actually did a preacher rap! I understand why White had some success as a minister after his playing career ended. I hope he rapped more than he ranted about the differences between races.
There were only nine West Coast Video locations when John Suder began working at one in Northeast Philadelphia in the 1980s. During downtime at the store, he began drawing advertisements for different videos the store had for rent. A manager noticed, and eventually he became the company’s art director. (“You’re making too much money,” a boss told him. “You’re getting paid as a manager and you’re also making all these signs. You're killing me here.”)
Suder’s coworker did the illustration of the eagle. (The actual Philadelphia Eagles football team had nothing to do with this video, incidentally.) Suder designed the rest of the box. He had the box in front of him while we talked, but “Buddy’s Watchin’ You” was not inside. That honor belonged to a screener copy for Death Warrant, a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie from 1990. IMDb says the tagline is “In Bloodsport and Kickboxer he won it all, now there are no rules, no escape, and NOBODY'S playing games!”
Suder didn’t have anything to do with the song itself, but he did get to attend the party surrounding the release. It was held at the Bourse, a downtown Philadelphia hotel, but it was not in a ballroom there. West Coast Video had, for some reason, rented out the Bourse's underground mall-esque food court for its party. The players/rappers made a grand entrance by coming down the escalator, before getting Villa Pizza or whatever.
“In the video, Andre Waters is wearing the leather duster and the leather hat,” Suder said. “That is exactly how he dressed for the party.”
The Eagles actually tried this kind of thing again, with “Coming Back Hard” in 1990. That one I have not seen, as it didn’t sell as well. Secondary market prices are absurd.
The version above is the so-so rip, but I am happy to announce that it is no longer the only one out there. As part of my commitment to delivering the best Philadelphia nonsense to a national audience, I got a copy of "Buddy’s Watchin’ You" and sent it to Aftermath’s Chris Person, who has a full setup for transferring things like old VHS tapes into digital formats. He has dutifully encoded the highest-quality version of “Buddy’s Watchin’ You” the world may ever see, and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. Enjoy!
