This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Mike Sykes.
It all started on Aug. 11, 1973. A group of kids were having a back-to-school bash in the basement of their apartment complex in the Bronx. The tunes were set in motion by the legend we know today as DJ Kool Herc.
He had the brilliant idea of playing the percussive breaks from people’s favorite songs back-to-back-to-back to keep the vibes flowing. He’d scratch the records on the turntables of his enormous sound system and use the mixer to switch between his songs.
That, folks, is widely regarded as the night hip-hop was born. It started in that Bronx basement 50 years ago, but now it’s spread out across the globe and taken multiple cultures and industries by storm.
Yes, the sports world is included in that.
From the music you hear at your local park on someone’s speaker during a pick-up game to the music blasted from the jumbotron speakers in your favorite team’s home arena, hip-hop is everywhere in the sports world.
That’s been the case for decades. Essentially, for as long as the genre has existed, the music has had a presence in sports. It blew up in the 90s as hip-hop entered the mainstream zeitgeist and has only grown more since. The marriage between the two has been a beautiful one.
It’s given us absolute classic songs from back in the day like Kurtis Blow’s 1984 hit “Basketball” to more recent bangers like Drake and Future’s Big Rings. There are so many teams in so many arenas who play DJ Khaled’s All I Do is Win and, as corny as it is, it still hits hard every time you hear it. Especially when it’s your team that did the winning.
But it’s not just the songs that this beautiful marriage between these two worlds has produced for us. They also share their talent. As the legend Lil Wayne once said, “Athletes wanna be rappers, rappers wanna be athletes.” Sometimes, that mix actually works out.
Our best example is probably Shaquille O’Neal, who easily had the best career of any athlete giving rap a go. He had multiple albums and his Shaq Diesel joint actually went platinum. Shaq even got a Biggie feature on “Can’t Stop the Reign.”
He’s certainly the most prominent example, but there are plenty of other athletes who gave music a shot. Damian Lillard is the example now. But, before him, you had the likes of Deion Sanders, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Kevin Durant, LeBron James and so many more who laid a verse down on wax.
Was it always good? Absolutely not. But it was always fun to at least hear your favorite athletes trying.
Sometimes, the reverse happens, too. Master P made it to the NBA for a few preseason games. J Cole actually had an NBA tryout and played professionally in the Basketball Africa League. Today, LSU’s Flau’Jae Johnson essentially plays college basketball on the side while she blossoms in her rap career. The catch is she’s very good at both things.
All of these super-talented folks having all of these amazing opportunities is a direct result of the beautiful union we have between hip-hop and sports. The effortless fusion of these two cultures is something we rarely see, but it makes complete sense.
Athletes are people, too. And hip-hop is all about the people. It imprinted on so many of us. The music raised us up. It taught us how to be cool, how to make friends and how to talk to people. It taught us rejection and failure, but it also taught us how to love and be loved. Most importantly, it never left us. It always connected with us.
It doesn’t matter who you are. Hip-hop will always accept you. You’re always welcome to the party, no matter where you come from. That’s the beauty of it all.
Happy birthday, hip-hop. Thank you for everything.
Quick hits: Get YouTube TV out of here … Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are really doing this? … and more
— Robert Zeglinski breaks down what you’ll get from an NFL+ subscription vs. what you’ll get from YouTube TV’s Sunday Ticket. NFL+ seems like the clear winner here.
— Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are really going to have an MMA fight. This so stupid. Charles Curtis has the details.
— Rest in peace to Dale Gribble aka Johnny Hardwick from King of the Hill. Cory Woodruff has more.
— Mitchell Northam ranked the NFL’s rookies in Fantasy Football tiers for you. Make sure you thank him later.
Have a fantastic weekend. Be kind to one another. See you on Monday!