FreeStyle Rolling is what the old, new-school movement of urban inline skaters prefer to call their sport from the urban jungle. Call them rollerbladers and you’ll get shut down before you can say “over.” Why? Because this movement is fresh, and if anything has recently been taken to another level by Diplomat Records out of Harlem. Co-CEO Jim Jones recently announced the launch of his new pro team, the DipSkates, comprised of talented guys from New York including Calvin Sayles and Ramelle Knight.

DipSkate is the first time that a record label has started a pro sports team, rather than the other way around. And while streetwear brands such as Volcom for example, have mixed their apparel with sports and music to reach major fame, the Diplomats are doing the same but from another direction. It’s the complete fusion of music, sports, and fashion, as explained by Jim Jones. With DipSkate will come a number of music videos, an apparel line, and various events where the team will be the featured rockstars.

What’s unique about this urban inline movement, is that it’s bringing cred back to a sport that lost it’s cool, which some believe started with the sell-out of the sport by the kingpin brand of the mid-‘90’s, Rollerblade. Inline skating is still only a part-time sport of the X Games with events in Asian countries mostly, because as we all know, the sport lost it’s cool in America over the years based on bad business and marketing. However this version, FreeStyle Rolling, coming from the streets is not your typical type of skating. It involves using cement barriers, railings, benches, and just about any type of urban blockade as a potential playground to inspire tricks, slides, spins, and rolls. As we wrote about last week in “Parkour + Urban Freeflow, the Graffiti Art of Movement, Indicates a New Rise  of Sneaker + Entertainment Collabs + Streetsport Culture,” freestyle rolling like parkour, is like skateboarding without the board. The moves are similar, yet repurposed and added to, like going backwards, for those with inline skates strapped to their feet, and often includes tricks that are faster, higher, and include more rotations than skateboarding.

The new movement gained momentum when filmmakers Chris and Courtney Brown (The Brown Brothers) created a documentary on these hardcore skaters from New York called “Know Difference” in late ’06 and gained cred among many people who saw various screenings in New York. The film is set to premiere internationally at the end of this year. The film also attracted the attention of Jim Jones, who wanted to combine sports with his music and fashion and did so by collaborating with the next movement in urban extreme.

As Ramelle explains in an excellent clip at www.freestylerolling.com, he was encouraged to play basketball when he was young, like many people in his surroundings, and get involved with something with structure, rules, and a number. But it wasn’t his scene. As he put it, “I’m an artist; I roll.” Freestyle Rolling is very individual and expressive and continues to gain momentum internationally as the new movement of American urban culture—now integrated with hip-hop. With DipSkate, you can expect another level of inspiration coming from the guys that fly against the polarization the sport’s notoriously gone through. As they put it, skating is a part of them, it’s their style, it’s what they do—whether other people think it’s cool or not.