LeBron Says He's Going To Put Out An Album... But He Won't Be Rapping On It
Complex - LeBron James has A&R’d albums in the past, but now it looks like the basketball icon is looking to work on an entire project for himself.
LeBron took to Twitter early Thursday morning,
LBJ previously A&R’d 2 Chainz’s Rap Or Go to the League album. His involvement was announced days before the March 2019 release, when Def Jam revealed it was working with King James to curate Tity Boi’s fifth studio offering.
LeBron has had a rich history with hip-hop, from being on the cover of XXL with Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Foxy Brown in 2005, to attending Drake’s So Far Gone release party in 2009, to cosigning Tee Grizzley on Instagram, and almost endless other examples. In fact, his penchant for messing up song lyrics has become something of an ongoing joke online, with many artists wishing they could get such an endorsement from him.
They say that the truly great leaders are the first to admit their weaknesses, and surround themselves with others who are strong in those areas.
Clearly, LeBron has read all of Dale Carnegie's books and is taking notes.
And if there's one thing LeBron is, its humble. He knows what he's g̶o̶o̶d̶ great at. Basically everything. His Achilles heal? Rapping apparently.
Luckily for him, he's boys with basically every rapper alive today.
So are we looking at another DJ Clue? The Professional type compilations?
One can hope and dream -
(sidebar- is this not one of the greatest songs of the 90s?)
If he were to just phone in some favors, get some beats from some producers, line up all his rapper friends, and knock out a 12 track "Lebron Presents…" album it would do insane numbers. He could narrate it (ala DJ Clue) and he'd probably add some Grammy's to his awards room if we're being completely honest.
Maverick if you're reading this get at me. I won't even charge you for this idea, just throw me an associate producer credit.
But the good thing in all this is that he said right off the top he won't attempting to rap on the album. Which is a huge sigh of relief for everybody.
People forget that the NBA has a long, storied career of supplying some terrible offshoot rap albums.
Let's analyze-
SHAQ
We all remember Shaq Fu. But not a lot of people remember Shaq did some crazy collabs- he got Phife Dawg, Fu Schnickens, and most notably The Notorious B.I.G. all to do tracks with him.
Allen Iverson
The rap career cut short. In the late 90s, Iverson tried his hand at rap under the alias "Jewelz". However, he was mmediately canceled for lyrics in the single, “40 Barz” that people found controversial. David Stern stepped in and nixed his album from happening.
Chris Webber
C Webb actually did a track with Kurupt that wasn't terrible and he's co-produced a ton of records (though not sure to what extent) including some big timers like Nas.
Damian Lillard
Dame Lilliard is actually no joke. He started a movement on Instagram called #4barfriday where up and comers would submit demos to Lilliard and if they were good enough he would post them.
That evolved into his fellow NBAers getting in on the action and saw the likes of LeBron, Paul George and Draymond Green all participating. He even dropped a freestyle on Sway's Morning Show that got a ton of love.
He took that momentum and dropped two albums, “The Letter O” in 2016, and “Confirmed” a year later under the alias Dame Dolla. Both albums were actually critically successful.
Dwight Howard
People forget Dwight Howard attempted to rap. And thank God because I don't think anybody could have been worse.
Listen at your own risk.
Kobe Bryant
Despite a fire remix feature on Destiny's Child's "Say My Name" Kobe's rap career was a total flop.
He also performed his debut single, “K.O.B.E” during the 2000 All-Star festivities and got roasted for it. (Even though it featured Tyra Banks)
Ron Artest
Artest’s actually released a full album “My World”. And it featured Diddy, Juvenile, Mike Jones, Big Kap, Nature and Capone.
Tony Parker
Just embarrassing. How Pop allowed this to happen I will never know.
Louis Williams
Lou Williams actually got Meek Mill to co-sign him, do some tracks, and developed a friendship with him. Wasn't half bad either.
Stephen Jackson
Mr. Jackson, who went by stage name "Stak5", is a legit rapper. He built a home studio in his basement and top himself how to produce.
Iman Shumpert
For as corny as Shump is/was he actually dropped some decent songs. Helps when he had the quality of beats that he did but nonetheless, respect where respect is due.
Joe Smith
Joe Smith dropped 19 track album, The Beginning under the artist name, Joe Beast. On it, he boasted of the thousands of women he pulled, compares himself to a pimp, brags about the dozens of killers and gangsters he's friends with, and went after Justin Bieber and Donald Sterling.
Marquis Daniels
Aside from having my favorite piece of jewelry in the history of jewelry,
Marquise also had a rap alter-ego called "Q6" which he released plenty of material under.
Kevin Durant
in 2010 Kevin Durant appeared on fellow D.C. native Wale’s More About Nothing mixtape on “The KD Interlude.”
Then 2 years later he released "Worried About Tomorrow" which is surprisingly pretty good.
Steve Francis
People forget what a stud Stevie Franchise was at the start of his career. Then bullshit like trying to start a rap career and clothing line got in his way and derailed it. This song is trash and the video might be worse.