There’s a reason the greats in basketball and Hip-Hop feel cut from the same cloth. Both worlds reward obsession, edge, and an unshakable belief that you’re next, even before the crowd agrees.
As someone who grew up watching box scores and liner notes with the same intensity, I find the parallels impossible to ignore. Throughout the mid and late ’90s, as Hip-Hop cemented itself as a culture-moving force, basketball was shifting toward a new class of players fluent in the music, the mindset, and the swagger.
With Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Tracy McGrady jumping straight from high school to the league, the prep-to-pros pipeline cracked wide open, creating mystique around elite prospects and their untapped ceilings.
Hip-Hop’s emphasis on being first mirrored that hunger, leading to rap stars cosigning phenoms—showing up to games, pulling them into inner circles, and even immortalizing them in lyrics. When either walks into a room, the aura says it all.
With the current ’26 class of high school stars winding down their seasons, and former prep standouts preparing for the NBA All-Star Weekend and March Madness, respectively, VIBE looks back at the history of Hip-Hop artists taking basketball phenoms under their wing.
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Lenny Cooke and Fat Joe
Image Credit: Peter Kramer/Getty Images; Larry Busacca/Getty Images An avid sneaker collector and basketball fan, Fat Joe parlayed his platinum status during the early ’00s into building a historic team that would dominate Rucker Park‘s EBC Tournament during the height of its popularity.
Among the more notable players that would join the Terror Squad roster was Lenny Cooke, a Brooklyn native once rated as the No. 1 high school basketball player in the nation, who would help lead the team to its first EBC Tournament championship in 2002.
While Cooke’s NBA career was derailed after going undrafted, he and Fat Joe’s brief but dominant run on New York City’s basketball courts and streets now borders on urban lore.
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Jay-Z and LeBron James
Image Credit: Scott Gries/ImageDirect; Scott Gries/Getty Images The friendship between rap mogul JAY-Z and NBA superstar LeBron James is well known to anyone familiar with sports. The pair’s relationship dates all the way back to 2001, when James was a sophomore sensation at St. Vincent-St. Mary High in Akron, Ohio.
Visiting Hov’s upscale hotel and attending one of his concerts with backstage passes later that night, the Sports Illustrated cover boy would later sign up to be a part of the Brooklyn native’s S. Carter Academy, a Reebok-sponsored collective of athletes.
Making it clear that he was not your average baller and was, indeed, The Chosen One, LeBron’s affiliation with JAY-Z has gone down as an appropriate pairing of two all-time greats.
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Jay-Z and Sebastian Telfair
Image Credit: Scott Gries/Getty Images For Universal Music For Universal Music; Ezra Shaw/Getty Images for Adidas US Former NBA player Sebastian Telfair‘s career may not have lived up to the hype, but there’s no denying he was as big-time as it gets during his heyday as the premier high school basketball player in New York City.
Starring at point guard for the Lincoln Railsplitters, Telfair would earn All-America Honors and be featured on the cover of national publications like Slam Magazine, leading him to become a celebrity before taking his graduation.
One of Telfair’s biggest fans at the time was JAY-Z, who first met the fellow Brooklynite at a game at St. John’s University and would later invite Telfair to join him for dinner at his 40/40 club in Manhattan.
In Summer 2003, when JAY-Z needed a point guard for his showdown against Fat Joe‘s championship Rucker team Terror Squad, he recruited the rising senior to suit up for his own EBC Tournament squad, Team S. Carter, evidence of Telfair’s status as a NYC hoops legend.
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Master P and DeMar DeRozan
Image Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images; Victor Decolongon/Getty Images Back when he was in high school, Compton, Ca. native DeMar DeRozan was touted as one of the most coveted prospects in the nation and a two-way wing player with the potential to change the fortunes of several college programs.
However, DeRozan, alongside P’s son and rapper Romeo Miller, was also known as one of the faces of rapper Master P.’s P.Miller brand and AAU squad, which the future NBA All-Star played with during the mid ’00s.
With Master P touting DeRozan and his son as a package deal, the pair signed letters of intent to play college basketball at USC in November 2007.
After a standout freshman season, DeRozan was picked ninth overall in the 2009 draft, while Romeo would be a relative non-factor during his tenure with the Trojans.
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Bow Wow and Lou Williams
Image Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images; Donna Ward/Getty Images for Converse Prior to catching name drops in songs by Drake, NBA sixth-man extraordinaire Lou Williams was one of the top rated high school basketball players in the nation.
Winning the Naismith Prep Player of the Year award and being named a McDonald’s All-American in 2005, the South Gwinnett High School star would appear alongside rapper and close friend Bow Wow during an episode of MTV Cribs.
The appearance, which aired months before he was drafted to the league, was a precursor to his run on national TV as one of the most explosive bench scorers in history.
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Fat Joe and Lance Stephenson
Image Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for New York Fashion Week: The Shows; Brad Barket/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival Lance Stephenson may be known as much for his hilarious antics on the court as his Swiss Army-Knife style of play, but in his hometown of New York City, the former NBA star is a high school and street basketball legend.
First making waves as a prodigious middle-schooler dubbed “Born Ready,” many of Lance’s first shining moments would come during his stint as a member of rapper Fat Joe‘s EBC Tournament team, Terror Squad, for whom the Brooklyn baller first suited up as far back as when he was a 15-year-old sophomore in high school.
Lance would help the Terror Squad dominate The Rucker as one of the EBC’s best performers and remains tight with Fat Joe to this day.
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Nelly and Bradley Beal
Image Credit: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images; Ethan Miller/Getty Images Bradley Beal‘s prep career was underscored by jaw-dropping statistics.
As a senior, the St. Louis native was honored with Missouri’s 2011 Mr. Basketball award as the top high school basketball player in the state, as well as the 2011 Gatorade National Player of the Year award.
During his high school years, one of Beal’s mentors was Nelly, a neighborhood guy who also happened to be one of the most famous rap stars on the planet.
As a family friend since Beal’s youth, Nelly used to babysit and walk him to school before his big break, spurring a bond between them that remains strong decades later.
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Drake and Andrew Wiggins
Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images;; Elsa/Getty Images Documenting the early parallels between Drake and Andrew Wiggins means tracing a shared Canadian moment before Wiggins reached Kansas or the NBA.
As Wiggins rose as a high school phenom, Drake publicly aligned himself with the hype, calling Wiggins “a good friend of mine” in a 2013 interview and predicting “phenomenal things.”
The acknowledgment of their bond, which was cemented by Drizzy’s namedropping Wiggins on his 2014 track “Draft Day, marked a symbolization and crossover of Canadian basketball promise and global music influence at a formative time for both stars.
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Drake and Zion Williamson
Image Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images; Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images From a sports and Hip-Hop fan’s lens, Drake noticing Zion Williamson always felt symbolic. In 2017, Drake followed Williamson on Instagram, then sent the internet into a frenzy by posting himself in Zion’s Spartanburg Day High School jersey—a co-sign that carried real weight.
Later that year, Williamson confirmed in an ESPN interview that the two had been building a relationship through text. For Drake, once labeled a can’t-miss music prospect, recognizing Zion’s generational basketball pedigree felt like a passing of momentum.
Williamson has since credited Drake with amplifying his early profile, long before going No. 1 in the 2019 NBA Draft.
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YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Mikey Williams
Image Credit: Erika Goldring/Getty Images; Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images From a new-school lens, Mikey Williams and YoungBoy Never Broke Again feel like kindred leaders—each redefining their lane while still teenagers in the late 2010s.
Williams’ viral basketball rise mirrored YoungBoy’s explosive grip on rap, both driven by raw flair and unapologetic style at unusually young ages. Their connection became public in 2020, when footage surfaced of Williams attending a YoungBoy concert and later linking with him on a basketball court.
Both have faced legal scrutiny along the way, adding complexity to their narratives. Williams has since named YoungBoy among his favorite artists, admitting he was genuinely starstruck meeting him—high praise, even with Drake also reaching out to connect.
