Happy fifteenth birthday to the unofficial Lunch table anthem. Can all the late 80’s and the 90’s babies please stand up? Back when everyone was wearing the extra baggy t-shirts and eating those crappy round school lunch pizzas, legendary producers Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, better known collectively as The Neptunes, decided to drop a gem on all of us. The beat, which Pharrell nearly gave to Jay Z, was cut up to perfection and laced with some of the most subtle drug references and double entendres, and even featured a cameo appearance by street legend Richard “Pee Wee” Kirkland.

Mr. Kirkland, a highly skilled NBA prospect who had short stints with the Chicago Bulls and the then-San-Diego-Rockets (now Houston Rockets) was unfortunately caught up in street life, and in 1971, was sentenced to ten years in prison at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He was drafted by the Bulls in 1968 and by the time he got out in 1981, he was 38 years old and no longer the same coveted player from the streets of Harlem, New York. Pee Wee did manage, however, to turn his life around and graduated with a master’s degree in human services from Lincoln University.

“The jewels is flirting, be damned if I’m hurting

Legend in two games like I’m Pee Wee Kirkland.”

The music video for “Grindin'” can be seen below: