As the NBA’s 80th(!) season got underway last week, one of the league’s brightest stars took the next step in expanding his footprint beyond the game. Like Kawhi Leonard before him, Anthony Edwards teamed up with Culture Jam to release Legend In My Hood, the second in the media imprint’s ongoing series pairing athletes with recording artists to executive-produce anthemic albums telling their personal stories.
This version was announced with a thrilling, Don Cannon-produced collaboration between Pusha T and Wale, “Damage Control,” and was accompanied on release by the Big Sean and Hit-Boy reunion “Moving Different.” Other artists featured on the album include Ant’s fellow ATLiens Baby Drill, Hunxho, and Quavo, along with a who’s-who of rising stars including Hurricane Wisdom, Nardo Wick, Rob49, and more.
Basketball and rap go together like peanut butter and jam; It’s a cliché, but we have those for a reason. As both art forms — and yes, both basketball and rap are art forms — began to peak in popularity at the same time, and share humble origins, it was only natural that some of the best players would have some musical aptitude, and vice versa.
While Edwards doesn’t rap on the album, he did have a guiding hand in its production and direction, with some assistance from Culture Jam founder Eesean Bolden. Ant-Man is credited as co-executive producer, and told Uproxx his goal for the album was to open his world to fans, beyond the sound bites and highlight plays that have made him such a charismatic — and sometimes controversial — star.
“This album is everything we’re about,” he said. “Family, hard work, and believing in yourself when nobody else does. Putting this together with my brother and some of the best in the game, that’s love right there.” His brother Bubba, who does rap under the handle B Different, and appears on the album in both capacities (as brother and as rapper), echoed this sentiment in a longer interview via Zoom.
“I would say I just want people to understand that he’s just a vibe,” B Different said of his own goal for Legend In My Hood. “To put a project like this together is like you’re telling people a different type of story, so they understand he’s not a one-trick monkey. He’s very talented in many different ways. He has a broad mind. He doesn’t have just one taste he wanna hear.”
Getting the contributors, though, is Bolden’s job. “We had a list of artists that we wanted to make the project,” he explains. “Some did, some didn’t, just due to logistics and stuff like that. It’s really cool because some artists that are on the track, there’s some stories kind of tied to it with Ant. Like, Wale being kind of the first to really support Ant and wear his shoes way early on.”
A veteran of the recording industry, Bolden used his connections and experience from his time as an A&R executive at labels like Capitol, Epic, and Warner to launch Culture Jam in an effort to create a more organic connection between athletes and music. “It goes back to me being a kid and my upbringing,” he recalled. “My parents, they were independent R&B artists, and I played sports. I played basketball.”
“Basketball, in particular, kept me on the straight and narrow, kept me out of trouble,” he continued. “When I got to college, I was already fully like, ‘No, I’m going to be in music.’ You know, I was 6’5″ in high school and I played center. And you know, a 6’5″ center is… I’m toast. I knew I was going the music way. I left college my sophomore year [for an internship at Interscope] and knew exactly what I wanted to do.”
But when it came to partnerships between athletes and brands — especially when it came to music, which should have been the most natural connection in the world — Eesean says they felt “transactional.” “Culture Jam, in a plain sense, we’re everything at the intersection of sports and entertainment,” he reasons. “We do make these albums that we’re excited to get out to you guys and proud of what we did, but then we’re also an agency. So we have a whole agency team that does experiential and broadcast campaigns [such as ESPN’s 2024 WNBA campaign]. We found a way that, if we partner with the right high level athlete, maybe we can tell their story as we merge them with the proper music.”
That’s certainly what Eesean has done with Ant Edwards and Legend In My Hood. In addition to the rappers Ant loves to listen to in workouts and warmups, the set also includes words of wisdom from family, via interludes with B Different (as Bubba) and their uncle Chris, who B describes as “a father figure” for the brothers growing up.
“He’s just he’s just been the extra backbone, the support that we needed when either our mom can’t do it or our grandma can’t do it,” he reminisced. “Chris is everything to us.” Regarding his own interlude, Bubba said, “It was kinda weird, honestly, just talking to nobody on the phone. I was home, by myself. I just had to blank everything out and just put myself in a room with it, and speak from the heart for real.”
Regarding what’s next for Ant, whether on or off court, B Different remains as optimistic and motivational as the music on the album he helped his brother co-produce. “I think he got one of them ceilings that you can’t build, bro. This is just the beginning. He’s young, you know. He has plenty of room for growth, and we’re just gonna keep growing and keep going.”
Legend In My Hood is out now via Culture Jam. Find more information here.