The Ho’lympics!

“Lemme see that belt,” Ludacris demands as Blender stands in the basement of the rapper’s palatial new three-story Atlanta home.

Blender shows him the belt. It is one of our prized possessions. The buckle is a silver, orb-shaped cigarette lighter, which can be removed to impress ladies. When Blender flicks its Bic, Ludacris gasps.

“I want that,” he says.

“We bet you do,” we tell him.

A mischievous smile flashes across his face, and he rubs his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what,” he says. “If I win today, I get the belt.”

But what does Blender get? Ludacris goes quiet and looks around the room: at the big-screen TV, the fully stocked bar, the movie poster for his star turn in 2 Fast 2 Furious, the half-eaten waffles on the table. His eyes settle on a pair of black sneakers over the television set, and he exclaims in triumph, “Jam Master Jay’s tennis shoes!”

A deal is made.

The occasion is the inaugural Ho’lympics, an epic summit in which two great powers — the hip-hop nation and the mass media — will engage in a fierce battle of wits, brawn, skill and sex drive to determine which is more, generally speaking, fly. Representing the hip-hop nation is Ludacris, the crown jewel of the Dirty South, with more than 7 million albums of fast-rhyming twang sold in his name. Representing the mass media is Blender, the third-most successful magazine at Dennis Publishing (out of four) and known throughout our office as the best music magazine in the history of the world.

Oddsmakers have given Blender a slim chance for victory, and for good reason: Like most hip-hop stars, Ludacris is a competition junkie. Hip-hop is a continual game of one-upmanship, and you can’t stay on top of the rap world for as long as Ludacris has without possessing what TV sports commentators can’t resist calling “fire in the belly.”

The competitive juices of the former Chris Bridges, though, run far beyond music. He loves to shoot guns, race anything with a motor, jump out of planes (with a parachute) and, of course, bed women at a rate that would almost make R. Kelly blush. His new video, “P Poppin’,” in which he tops 2 Live Crew’s world record for most T&A in a three-and-a-half minute clip, is a lurid spectacle of exotic dancers contorted into quasi-gynecological poses. Elsewhere on his new CD, Chicken and Beer, Ludacris tries his best to upend every expectation of him and outdo his rivals in lewdness, sensitivity and skill.

“There’s competition in sports, and, most importantly, there’s competition in hip-hop,” he says, sitting in his basement playroom after winning a warm-up game of Connect Four against his skyscraping, charismatic manager, Shaka Zulu. “I love competing against the best.”

Today, instead, he will be competing against Blender.

EVENT #1
ONE-HANDED BRA UNHOOKING
“Man, who thought of this idea?” Ludacris asks. He pauses, and then remembers the answer: “It was me.”Arranged kneeling on a black leather couch in front of him are five women, oiled up and wearing only their undergarments. The challenge is to see who can unhook all five bras, with one hand behind his back, more quickly. A stopwatch is ready. There will be two heats.

“The only reason you might win,” Ludacris tells Blender, “is because girls are always taking them off for me.”

He fumbles with the first bra, but eventually pops it off. His crew — assistants, friends, managers and record-label flacks — cheer him on from the sidelines. The second bra is a snap (literally); the third is a challenging array of six clasps; and the fourth a complicated fastening system. Seconds tick by as he tries to figure out how it works. He reddens, but eventually gets it off before moving on to the fifth. His time is just over a minute.

Having watched carefully, we move through the line with relative ease until running afoul of the fourth bra. Ludacris cries “Cheater!” as we look over the woman’s shoulder to figure out the clasping system. Our time is 45 seconds.

Prepared for round two, Ludacris moves through the line like KY Jelly as bra after bra comes off between his nimble fingers. As soon as he pops the last bra, he looks up at the timekeeper. “How was that?” he asks.

“Eighteen seconds,” she says.

Ludacris runs around the room throwing his fists in the air, galloping into the foyer and punching the walls. The event is his. Or so he thinks. Blender moves down the line with equal dexterity. Our time: 18 seconds. A draw is declared.

Ludacris takes a step back and addresses the crowd. “I’d just like to thank lady number 3,” he begins, “for making this possible.”

ROUND ONE Ludacris: 1 Blender: 1


EVENT #2
HIP-HOP SCRABBLE
“Did anyone bring a Scrabble board?” Blender asks.

The assistants, stylists, prop people, photographers, sketch artists, referees and fans look around dumbly. Suddenly a voice calls out, “I have one.” That voice belongs to Ludacris, who runs upstairs and fetches a still-wrapped “deluxe version” of the game.

“I have a lot of stuff like this,” he says, “because I like entertaining.” Indeed, his house is a self-styled theme park, offering a lake for bass fishing, a dirt track for 2 Fast 2 Furious–style racing, a swimming pool and barbecue pit for summer parties, a full-size basketball court, tennis courts, a golf driving range, a plush movie theater (complete with a glass-encased snack counter) and indoor games from Uno to pool.

Ludacris settles at a table near his theater — “The Ludaplex” — and spreads out the Scrabble tiles. He hands the instructions to his assistant, who will act as referee.

The rules are simple: Only hip-hop lingo can be used. Thus, words such as here and there are not allowed, but herre and thurr are golden.

Ludacris draws seven tiles, arranges the letters on his board and claps his hands together. Slowly, his eyes dancing with glee, he lays his first word onto the board: N-E-G-R-O.

“That’s a hip-hop word right there,” he declares.

However, Blender puts down an even longer word, S-E-R-V-I-N. And the race is on. Ludacris parries with M-O-F-O.

Shaka Zulu’s 10-year-old son stands nearby. “What’s a mofo?” he asks.

“It’s somebody who’s crazy,” Ludacris tells him.

Blender, at the ready, adds C-R-A-Z-Y in front of MOFO. The judge adds up the points and then turns to Blender. “Do you want to know what the secret to this game is?” he asks.

Ludacris quickly cuts him short. “Hey, chill out — the game ain’t over,” he says. The heat is on.“I’m thirsty,” says the 10-year-old.

Ludacris turns to his assistant and says, “Awww, let the little nigger have a drink.” He then lays down N-I-G-G-A-S.

And so it goes: HOV, HUMV, TWEET, EGO, RIDE, REAL, FO, RAW, NANN and PUNANN. It seems as if anything goes, but when Blender puts down H-O-Z, Ludacris balks.

“That’s not right,” he says.

Evidently, for the man who wrote one of rap’s biggest hits about the subject, the word can be spelled only two ways: h-o-e-s or h-o-e-z. But Blender presents evidence in the form of the Juvenile song “Hoz Ain’t Nuthin’ but Hoz,” and Ludacris relents. He then bends the rules with his next word, J-E-N.

“Like Jen from the block,” he says, in reference to J.Lo. “That’s a double word score, you bastard.”That double word score puts Ludacris over the top. He ends up taking the game, 256 to 236.

There is such a thing as a good winner. Ludacris is not one. “Y’all are at a loss for words,” he gloats, snatching a victory chicken breast from a Def Jam employee. “I beat you in Scrabble.”

ROUND TWO Ludacris: 2 Blender: 1


EVENT #3
40-OUNCE RIFLE SHOOTING
Ludacris walks along the edge of his lake, muddy from the rain, with a .22-caliber rifle. “There’s two things in life: to be scared or prepared,” he says, “and I’m prepared like a motherfucker.”

A Def Jam employee is hard at work setting up a pyramid of 40-ounce beer bottles on a dirt mound. Well, actually, she couldn’t find any 40-ouncers at the store, and the Coronas she bought instead have been guzzled already. So a diet root beer pyramid is erected instead.

Ludacris stands at the ready, lovingly polishing the muzzle of his rifle.

“Um, is the safety on?” we ask.

The goal is first to shoot off the can at the top and then systematically knock off each layer of the four-level pyramid, one at a time.

“This is the best thing ever,” Ludacris says as he sticks a bullet in the chamber. He cocks, aims at the pyramid and squeezes the trigger. Nothing happens. The safety is indeed on.

He fires off his first shot and demolishes both the first and second row of cans. With three more shots, the entire pyramid is destroyed.

He hands the gun to Blender.

“Beat that,” he says.

We do. With the first shot, we knock off the top can. The crowd gasps in admiration. The second bullet eliminates the second row, and a third shot explodes the rest of the diet root beer. Victory is ours.

ROUND THREE Ludacris: 2 Blender: 2


EVENT #4
FAST, FURIOUS ATV RACING
Remember the oepning chase scene in 2 Fast 2 Furious, when Tyrese careens over an open drawbridge? Well, Blender’s race with Ludacris is nothing like that. What we possess in marksmanship, we lack in motorcycle experience, and Ludacris’s brand-new four-wheel ATVs operate just like motorcycles.

Shaka Zulu gives Blender a quick lesson in shifting gears, then pauses to discuss with Ludacris which bra models they want to mack. “Well, that one’s mom is here already, so she’s out,” Ludacris says. He turns to another: “Hey, how old are you?” The answer, 20, is satisfactory.

The 20-year-old holds a checkered flag in her hands. She lowers it, and the race around Ludacris’s lake is on. Actually, race wouldn’t quite be the right word for it. Let’s just say that Ludacris won by about 25 bras.

ROUND FOUR Ludacris: 3 Blender: 2


AND THE WINNER IS…
THE MEDAL CEREMONY
Ludacris sits in the corner and discusses the awards ceremony with Shaka Zulu for several minutes. Finally, he stands up and is ready to receive his accolades. “We sit down and we think about everything,” he says about his conferences with his manager. “We have a science, and it works.”

That, he says, is how he signed the platinum rapper Chingy to his imprint; why he raps in songs by everyone from Kylie Minogue to Trick Daddy; and what made him decide to compete for the Ho’lympics gold in the first place.

“That’s funny as hell,” Ludacris says as the bra models come by with the medals. “They got the gold and the platinum awards.”

He is told that the second medal is actually a lesser silver one. “In hip-hop,” he says, “that’s platinum.” As the world champion of hip-hop Scrabble, he does have final say in the matter. So bra model number 4 kindly bequeaths Ludacris with the winning platinum as the world heaves a sigh of relief. The artist has triumphed over the press once again.

As we walk away with the ignominious gold medal around our neck, Ludacris stops us. “You forgot something,” he says.

We reach under our jacket and give him the belt off our pants. Fair is fair.

He raises his shirt and hooks the belt around his khaki pants. It fits. ’Cris is happy. He turns to Shaka Zulu, at the pool table in the next room, and hollers, “We got to start having Ho’lympic parties in the crib for real!”