Girl Talk vs. Lil Wayne, Steelers vs. Packers

I've got an interview with Gregg Gillis, the pop mashup artist known as Girl Talk who plays a sold-out show Friday night at the Electric Factory in the Inquirer Weekend section. That's here. I talked to Gillis about biomedical engeneering, hip-hop and copyright law, among other things, such as his love of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

As a proud Pittsburgher who was awarded the key to the city last year, Gillis is also an ardent supporter of that westen Pennsyvania team that seems to collect Super Bowl rings the way some people collect bobble head dolls.

"Absolutely," Gillis said, while making it a point to add that he also supports Pittssburgh's long suffering baseball team and "I wear a Pirates hat most days of my life." "You have to get into [the Steelers]. I'm a big NFL fan anyway. But there's no other option in Pittsburgh. It's part of living there." I asked Gillis how he feels about rooting for Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback who has faced allegations of sexual assault twice since 2009 and who won a "most disliked" poll in the Hollywood Reporter by a landslide over everybody else playing in Super Bowl XLV on Sunday.

"I'm not a fan of went went down," Gillis said. "It's hard to be a music fan sometimes, too, for that matter. Where do you draw the line between disliking this human being and cheering for what they represent?" he asked, posing the same question Eagles fans either asked themselves, or didn't, about Michael Vick. (A separate Hollywood Reporter poll found that Vick was the second most hated player in the NFL, behind Brett Favre and ahead of Tom Brady and Roethlisberger.)

"It's just ultimately a bummer when you love the team and root for them your whole life and you want to ride and be down 100%, and then there's this thing that's holding you back from fully committing."

Speaking of the ultimate game - until they play another one next year - Girl Talk isn't the only act taking sides. No longer incarcerated New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne, who's playing the Wells Fargo Center on March 26 as part of his I Am Music II tour (tickets go on sale Saturday morning at 10 a.m.), is pulling for the Pack.

In "Green & Yellow," which the New Orleans rapper released yesterday, he comes out as a proud cheesehead. Rapping over Steelers fan Wiz Khalifa's "Black & Yellow," Wayne expresses disdain for Roethlisberger: "They call him Big Ben, but he weak though / We in Dallas, but we Lambeau Leap, hoe." Weezy goes on to suggest that that the Steelers hirsute strong safety is in for the same fate that Vick's Eagles met last month: "We knocked the Eagles and the Falcons and the Bears off /Now we 'bout to cut Troy Polamalu hair off."

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