Fine, We’ll Take LiAngelo Ball’s Rap Song Seriously
In November, a clip went viral from Angel Reece’s podcast in which NBA player Lonzo Ball told his younger brother LiAngelo Ball, a current NBA hopeful, to cash in his chips and pursue his basketball dreams overseas. Luckily, the middle Ball brother didn’t listen to reason. If he had, he might not have released what’s currently the buzziest rap song in America.
Perhaps you saw fellow athlete-musician Shaquille O’Neal dancing to “Tweaker” on TNT’s Inside The NBA last night? Or LeBron James jamming out to it on Instagram? Or videos of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Detroit Lions bumping it in their locker rooms? Since G3 GELO (a name we apparently have to call LiAngelo now) debuted “Tweaker” on a Kick stream on December 31, the heavily memed track has become an unofficial anthem of sorts for athletes and racked up shoutouts from the likes of Freddie Gibbs, Moneybagg Yo, and Boosie Badazz — with the latter two angling to get on a remix. As of January 8, it had reached No. 8 on the U.S. Spotify chart.
The song itself, per its Pitchfork review (!), is aughts Louisiana hip-hop pastiche by way of Youngboy Never Broke Again. Its singsongy chorus is annoyingly catchy, as if it had been designed in a studio to be fodder for the “complete the lyric” social-media challenges. LiAngelo sounds surprisingly fluid in the pocket. Its production feels like a 2025 Master P revamp, in that it provides the perfect canvas to “Make ’Em Say, ‘Uhh, LiAngelo Might Actually Be a Capable Rapper.’” Meanwhile, Lonzo, despite wanting to ship his brother to Lithuania, is apparently the song’s co-writer. What if Big Baller Brand was a record label all along?
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