Last year, Spider Studios in Ohio released a 30 second snippet of a secret recording of Kevin Durant and LeBron James rapping in the studio. At the time, it was just being revealed that the two NBA superstars had worked on music together, with the short recording the only evidence of the fact.
Fast forward to 2018 and the full recording is now available, courtesy of producer Franky Wahoo who leaked the song in its entirety on Soundcloud. The song is not completely accurate as Wahoo made a new beat from scratch for potential copyright purposes. Nevertheless, the meat of the song – arguably the two best players in the NBA rapping – is all there.
From Wahoo’s statements about the studio session (courtesy of Jabbari Weeks of Noisey), Durant and LeBron never intended to release the song and were just hanging out in a studio. The lyrics came courtesy of the two forwards but the beat was something Durant had prepared (there is ambiguity around where the beat actually came from which is why Wahoo remade it instead of leaking the original track). The song, titled “It Ain’t Easy” was recorded during the lockout in 2011. The duo allegedly recorded several other songs, mostly covers, in the same time.
James and Durant are not known among the NBA rappers (that group is currently headlined by Damian Lillard) but both of them do a pretty solid job on this one-off track. Even as the two have become rivals on the court since then, they seem to have a good relationship off the court so perhaps one day, we’ll see more collaboration between the all-time greats.
