Olympic Snowboarder Louie Vito Taught Jim Jones To Snowboard

Olympic Snowboarder Louie Vito can get a bit obsessive when it comes to the music he listens to during a competition. "I actually do stress about the playlist," said Vito, the 25-year-old Ohio native, Olympian and ESPN X-Games host, during a trip to XXL headquarters recently. "I'll go to the middle of the song, hear the beat, and if it's heavy enough I'll put it on and go snowboarding, and edit the playlist from there."

At this point, Vito knows what it takes to win a competition. Since turning pro in 2005, he's racked up two X Games Gold medals, five victories at the Grand Prix tournament, a slew of medals at every conceivable level of the pro circuit, and a fifth overall finish at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver at the age of 21. But outside of snowboarding—which has gotten him endorsement deals with Red Bull, G-Shock and Nike, among others—his biggest passion is hip-hop. And the two dovetail perfectly when Vito is out in the snow.

Growing up with a father who owned a radio station, he was first introduced to artists like Sublime and Nirvana, only for them to give way to the Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine, which eventually led to A Tribe Called Quest and a lifelong passion for hip-hop, particularly Pusha T and Meek Mill. "I had every Beastie Boys album; that was literally all I would listen to, and I could recite every line from all of them," he said. "And now people are like, 'Oh, rap's horrible.' But for me, snowboarding is about the energy level it gets me to, or if it gets stuck in your head."

With almost a decade of professional snowboarding under his belt and a love of rap music that is as encyclopedic as his tricks are practiced, Louie Vito told XXL about some of his favorite hip-hop stories, from choosing his "contest" and "on-deck" songs to his Olympic playlist to his experiences bringing Jim Jones and Yelawolf snowboarding. Forever winning. —Dan Rys (@danrys)

On Getting Into Hip-Hop
Louie Vito: My dad owns a radio station in Ohio, so that started it. I listened to everything; I was really into Sublime and Nirvana, and then the Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine, and then A Tribe Called Quest, and it kinda got stronger. Obviously Biggie and Tupac. I'm from the Midwest, so it's a little bit of both [coasts]. But I remember I was so excited, because I was supposed to go to the Rage Against The Machine and Beastie Boys show in Ohio, but one of the Beastie Boys broke his arm [Ed. Note: The Beastie Boys' Mike D. broke his arm in 2000 in a severe bicycle accident, causing the group to cancel their Rhyme And Reason co-headlining tour with Rage and Busta Rhymes] so they postponed it, and then Rage broke up, and I never got to see either of them. So that was how it started, and now it's all I listen to.

On Snowboarding With Jim Jones And Yelawolf
Louie Vito: We took Jim Jones snowboarding two years ago, that was really cool. He brought a crew, his son, a whole bunch of friends. I had a YouTube series with Red Bull, and we filmed it for that. We were teaching them and they loved it, they got so hyped. He was so into it, I thought I would see him the next season. But seeing Jim Jones and how stoked he was, it makes you feel good. I'm glad to share what I love with you. These guys have never gone snowboarding, but when it clicks, they get hype and it's so funny.

He was getting comfortable, and he started saying he wanted to rap while he was snowboarding. I was telling him, I really liked the song he did with Meek, "I'll Be Back." He was tripping out that I even knew that song, because he didn't know that much about me before he went up there. He just thought I was a fan who likes "Pop Champagne," who likes "Ballin'," but I liked him even before that. So he's rapping and he's getting cocky, he looks in back because the camera guy's following him, and he catches his toe and just goes down. Gets back up, goes down. [Laughs] It didn't bother him though, he was just having fun, so it was real cool. And I enjoyed hanging out with those guys; if I need anything I know I can hit him up and he will hook it up and be there.

And we went with Yelawolf, and he was instantly so sick, 'cause he's so good at skateboarding anyways, so snowboarding came quick. He came a couple times—Utah during Christmas one year, and he's got it now. Lil Jon has been in the snowboarding world with all of us for a while, he's funny, he's great, great people. I've taken DJ Spyder, he's a good homie, we went snowboarding for the first time. But I'm all about it, I love taking people snowboarding who have never gone before. Hip-hop guys get me more hyped than athletes even, because I just listen to hip-hop more.

On Choosing His Competition Playlists
Louie Vito: It's kinda like, whatever song I'm really into at the time that kind of just gets me going, 'cause I don't normally switch it out during the year. It's funny though, because the tempo changes. At the last Olympics, I listened to a Clipse song for both my get ready and compete song, but my compete song is way more mellow than what I listen to now. The last couple years I've listened to so much Meek Mill, just because I like his energy. I like reading comments on the blogs, and they're like, "He's always yelling about money, watches and cars." But when I'm snowboarding, I just need to get in it, because as soon as I drop in everything goes silent. [The song] just blocks everything out and gets me into the zone.

I was really into that Bad Meets Evil album that Eminem and Royce Da 5'9 did, and "Above The Law" was my get ready song. When that beat drops, it's so hard and it kinda just puts you in it. So then you're just waiting, you're just staring at the half pipe waiting to go. You don't even see the person waiting ahead of you. And then they tell you to go, you hit your song, wait til it gets to the part where the music drops, and you just go.

For the Euro X Games, I was in 5th place and I was the last rider to drop, 'cause I qualified first. And I listened to "Blocka," the Pusha T song. And that one was a darker, harder-hitting song, and I told people afterwards, I was ready to kill somebody after that. It was like I was going to war, I was so fired up, so ready, and then I just put on a little Meek Mill—I listened to "Believe It" a lot last year—and then that was it. But the year before that, I was 23 and "I'm A Boss" was big. "And I'm only 23 / I'm the shit now look at me." That was perfect for me, 'cause it gives you that confidence. When I got older I would stop worrying about what other people thought and only worry about what I could control, so you use that Floyd Maywhether approach, I call it. You gotta go into it thinking that you're the best and no one can beat you. So that lyric right there was perfect for it, because the whole song is just telling you that you're the boss. What's a better song than that when you're going on a run?

On Meeting Rappers
Louie Vito: I'm a big Waka Flocka Flame fan, and I met him. X Games one year was the same time as the BET Awards in L.A., and he was at a Red Bull party, and I went up to him and he was just the coolest dude, which for me, makes me like an artist even more if they're down to earth and not above it all. He was cool, I think he makes great music based on the fact that if you play it in the club, the club's gonna turn up no matter what. It's kinda getting to that point sometimes, where if you wanna make money in hip-hop, you gotta make a song that gets radio spins and gets played in the clubs, and it's really hard. Like I'm a big Sean Price fan, he's one of the better rappers, I think, out, but he's not making money like Waka Flocka is.

I went to this Ace Hood and Meek Mill show in SoCal, and that was the first time I ever met Meek. And he's just like a kid, straight up a kid, he's so funny. But it was a bummer, because at the beginning of the night he was in his bus and I was upstairs, and I hung out mostly with Lil Snupe, who I knew from Worldstar and all his freestyles. And he was like a kid, 18 or whatever, so he was just chillin', but he was super fun to hang out with. And then hanging out with Meek was cool. And obviously, I'm a big supporter of him, but sometimes I'm like, man, I really like Cassidy. [Laughs] And I have friends who are so about Meek Mill—I was down with Meek back in the day, I liked all his early stuff—and they're so one-sided about [the Meek-Cassidy beef]. And I'm like, how can you deny some of the Cassidy stuff? Some of the songs he dropped, whether you like him or not, were pretty heavy. But that's the biggest misconception between those two, and that's why it was all blown out of proportion.