During the 2011-12 NBA lockout season, LeBron James and Kevin Durant teamed up to record a rap song called “It Ain’t Easy,” which was recently released.
While it has been six seasons since the recording, Spider Studios producer/engineer Franky Wahoo released a 30-second snippet during the 2017 NBA Finals, and it naturally went viral.
Despite an offer from TMZ and a reported opportunity with NBA 2K19 that never materialized, Wahoo decided to release the song on Soundcloud.
After releasing the song, Wahoo detailed how it all came together, via Jabbari Weekes of Noisey:
I would make beats for MGK and he would go to this studio called Swagger Studios a lot and work with this guy named Ben Schigel. So, that’s the studio LeBron James and Kevin Durant came up to cause it was during the lockout. Originally it was only going to be Kevin Durant that was going to record, cause he did music and stuff, but then LeBron James ended up showing up. So we turned on the Pro Tools setup, and Schigel recorded a couple of songs over 4 or 5 Watch the Throne beats —“N**** In Paris”, “Lift Off,” and “HAM”—and two [original] songs. The one LeBron song [“It Ain’t It”] was the one that I was a part of. Then they left, didn’t hear anything of it. It was kind of cool, just this dude came in, there was no paperwork signed. Just recorded, hung out all night and left.
From Shaquille O’Neal to Kobe Bryant to Lonzo Ball, James joins a list of Los Angeles Lakers players who have at least one rap song. While some players are better than others, the relationship between the game of basketball and rap music is undeniable.
Heading into the 2018-19 season, the young core has been known to troll each other on social media. With James in the mix now, there may be opportunities for him and Ball to battle each other and determine who is the best on the team.
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