LiAngelo Ball Has Etched His Name into the Basketball-Rap Canon

Benjamin Kenyon

Rap/Hip-hop Journalist

While LiAngelo Ball, a.k.a GELO, a.k.a G3, has yet to play a minute of NBA basketball, he has made his mark on the league in his own way. Despite this, he is NBA adjacent, with stints in both the NBA’s G-League and Summer League, two development leagues used by the NBA to assess the talent of basketball prospects. His brothers, Lonzo and LaMelo Ball, have both carved out successful careers in the NBA for themselves. With the release of Ball’s debut single, “Tweaker”, is now a mainstay in NBA locker rooms and arenas, propelled largely in part due to the online virality of the song’s opening line. “I might swerve, bend that corner, woah-oah-oah”

The song took off in popularity instantly, the original viral snippet hitting the Twitter-sphere à la an appearance on a Twitch stream by internet personality N3on. He promptly released the snippet, which debuted at No. 7 on the Hot Rap Songs Chart. Ball is far from the first basketball player to moonlight as a music artist, but he has already made it farther than most, with news recently coming out of his signing of a record deal with Def Jam worth up to $13 million, as well as his being booked to perform at this year’s Rolling Loud California. Here’s a few others who have tested the musical waters.

The first NBA player to experience major crossover success in hip-hop was Shaquille “Shaq” O’Neal. Shaq didn’t wait long after joining the league in 1992 to start releasing music, putting out four rap albums during the 1990’s. While all of his albums charted, his debut, 1993’s Shaq Diesel, performed the best, peaking at No. 25 on the US Billboard Chart, and earned Platinum status from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album holds up and has its heights, such as two features from A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife Dawg, and many memorable lines. Shaq’s resonance as an artist decreased album by album, each performing worse than the last until he put his music career on hold in 1998. In recent years, Shaq has reemerged in the music scene, performing DJ sets all over the country and releasing electronic music under the name

In 2000, the late Kobe Bryant released the single “K.O.B.E.” from his planned debut album Visions featuring a hook from supermodel Tyra Banks, a collaboration manufactured by Columbia Records in hopes to bolster the song and replicate Shaquille O’Neal’s commercial success. Kobe spends the runtime of the track flexing the spoils of his newfound lifestyle that was taking place in the early years of his basketball career. The song is by no means bad, but feels choppy, robotic, and like it was made by an NBA player after they’d already made it in their field. The single drastically underperformed, prompting Columbia to quietly scrap the planned Kobe project entirely. The song, as well as the rest of the album, have since leaked online. The tracklist is star-studded, featuring appearances from Destiny’s Child, Nas and 50 Cent to name a few. While Kobe’s album failed to see the light of day, he remains a part of rap as a genre, with thousands of references to Kobe having been made in various hip-hop songs over the years.

Allen Iverson, a.k.a. “The Answer” was not just an immensely influential basketball player, but also an all-around cultural force. His fashion, tattoos, and general off-court persona still reverberate through modern day basketball and hip-hop culture. Iverson’s foray into music was brief. While gearing up to release his debut album, “Misunderstood”, under the name Jewels, the NBA’s league office, specifically then-league commissioner David Stern, got ahold of the lyrics for Iverson’s single, “40 Bars”. Stern soon after called Iverson and his team to the league offices and held a meeting consisting of him reading off the lyrics to Iverson’s single, including its explicitly homophobic lyrics and violent content. Stern told Iverson his album would not be allowed to be released, as Iverson had become far too big a star, one of the faces of the league, and “40 Bars” could have easily jeopardized his personal sponsorships and the league’s as a whole. Iverson relented and kept his album in the vault.

LiAngelo Ball will have ample opportunity to prove he is here to stay. He’ll certainly have to improve his performing chops, as evidenced by a recent live rendition of “Tweaker” at a recent Detroit Lions football game.  Ball will have a plethora of resources at his disposal, whether that be the monetary support from Def Jam or the loud, vocal emotional support from his promoter-father, LaVar Ball. Time will tell if Ball can carve out a permanent spot for himself.