Basketball and Hip-Hop: A Love Affair
The best thing about Hip-Hop is its ability to transcend a lot of mediums. It can touch so many different people due to its apparent length and versatility. One of the most natural fits that it has is basketball. While both came from very different origins, their popularisation came off the sweat and effort of mostly young african-american men. The fact that they work so well together is therefore a given.
In honor of ESPN's Chicago Bulls documentary The Last Dance, I've decided to break down the relationship between the two and what they've given each other.
Historically, it's easy to see how the two came together. During the 1980's, there was the growth of Hip-Hop culture around the United States thanks to faces such as Kurtis Blow, Run DMC, LL Cool J and a lot of other impactful artists. At the same time, the NBA was coming out of its dark ages of the 1970's thanks to Julius "Dr. J" Earving, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Similarly, the international growth of Hip-Hop came in the 1990's with the Notorious B.I.G, Tupac and Jay-Z, while basketball saw Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal help bring it to the international forum with the Bulls dynasty and Olympic play.
African-American men in urban areas could play basketball easily and could rap easily. You don't need much to do either. So this became a partnership that managed to work.
Hip-Hop gave basketball legitimacy in the urban area and continues to do so today. One of the earliest examples was Kurtis Blow's song 'Basketball', in which he says: "Basketball is my favorite sport, I like the way they dribble up and down the court". And even though that song seemed commercial and campy at the time, the next generation saw it and made it cool again. That can be seen within Ice Cube's 'Today Was A Good Day' in which he said "Get me on the court and I'm trouble / Last week fucked around and got a triple double / Freaking brothers every way like M.J. / I can't believe today was a good day". They're classic songs that helped establish legitimacy.
All the while, basketball, and specifically the NBA, brought that same legitimacy to Hi-Hop but to a much different audience: the general populace. It's through mentions in Hip-Hop and putting the music in the arenas and the broadcasts that you get to hear a brand new audience. It's one of the best things that happened to Hip-Hop. Add to that, Hip-Hop artists such as Snoop Dogg and others would show up at games and do halftime shows, it's exposure for the brand that is Hip-Hop. It's the reason why you have Drake as the global ambassador of the Toronto Raptors. It's also why you have basketball players like LeBron James and Damian Lillard who openly talk about their musical selections.
Some would say that Hip-Hop needed basketball to be successful, but I believe it was and continues to be a mutual relationship. I don't know how well the NBA would've made it out without urban america switching its focus from football to basketball. It's one of the major changing points in both histories: it's important.