It’s muthafuckin’ game time.
Were you rollin’ with The Game, Kung Fu Kenny and the Los Angeles Dodgers, or were you down with Bun B, Slim Thug and the Houston Astros?
No matter your allegiance, and even if you don’t have one, Wednesday’s (November 1) Game 7 of the World Series between the perennially successful Dodgers and the championship-winning Astros capped off a thrilling battle between two of baseball’s best. Hip Hop — in the spirit of competition — has always tipped its cap to America’s national pastime, so HipHopDX has collected some of the notable references to World Series.
Here are seven times rappers have rhymed slick about baseball’s biggest stage.
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Danny Brown — “Six Degrees”
“Vomit seven colors, TiVo the World Series/ About to miss the game hitting sevens on the slot machine.”
Oddball braggadocio is to Danny Brown what Clayton Kershaw is to the Dodgers and Justin Verlander is to the Astros. Brown hopped on BADBADNOTGOOD and Ghostface Killah’s cut and laid out his World Series plans, which include spewing hues and gambling. If that’s his routine, he won’t be tuning in tonight.
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Busta Rhymes — “Survival Hungry”
“What I feel is just, ha/ The type of shit that make you act stupid for real, what the-/ Y’all before ya try to wear these you need to hear these/ Welcome all y’all to my World Series.”
Hip Hop in the ‘90s was as competitive as vying for the last piece of pie at Thanksgiving. So, it makes sense that Bussa Buss included this joint on his 1997 album When Disaster Strikes… Like the Dodgers on Tuesday (October 31), down 3-2 in the Series, Busta was ravenous in his will to succeed.
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De La Soul — “Foolin”
“While you fools claim corners, we gon’ claim theories/ Y’all some stickball niggas, we the World Series.”
When Hip Hop heads think of De La, daisies and love often come to mind. But on “Foolin,” it was clear that Posdnous and Dove were in no mood for games. With this line, Dove slid spikes-up at rappers with Major League dreams and pee-wee plans.
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Drake — “Miss Me”
“World Series attitude, champagne bottle life/ Nothing ever changes so tonight is like tomorrow night.”
One of the coolest parts about the Series is seeing the victors pop bottles and spray the floors of the locker room with champagne. Drake — who used World Series-inspired artwork for his “Back To Back” single — was clearly riding on the high of the success of his breakout mixtape, So Far Gone, when he rapped this line on a cut from his debut album, Thank Me Later. Let it flow, Drizzy.
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Jadakiss — “Feel Me”
“I’m ‘bout to fuck the game up for real like in the World Series/ Nigga that parachute down in the field.”
Mr. Raspy can talk shit with the best of them. Here, he likened himself to Michael Sergio, an actor who famously parachuted into Shea Stadium with a sign reading “Let’s Go Mets” during Game 6 of the Mets’ series against the Boston Red Sox in 1986. Maybe Sergio’s efforts were a good-luck charm because the Mets won in 7 and Boston’s curse lived on until 2004.
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Machine Gun Kelly — “World Series”
“Kells, who the fuck want it with him?/ We ball like the Indians at the World Series eighth inning.”
The rapid-fire Cleveland spitter not only embodied the Series, but also the rabidness of Indians fans with this burner. This line was clearly meant to be metaphorical, as the Indians had not made it past the ALCS in almost two decades when the track was released in 2015. The next year, the Indians ended the drought but blew a 3-1 lead and lost to the Chicago Cubs in 7.
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Rick Ross — “New Flame”
“Homeplate, World Series, how a nigga sliding in her/ Baby, I’m a boss, I’m talking George Steinbrenner.”
In which Ross equated nasty sex to family-friendly baseball on a Chris Brown song. His clever lines were followed up by more pinstriped wordplay: “Panamera, Yogi Berra, my two-seater Derek Jeter/ Got more stripes than all these niggas/ Babe Ruth balling in a Beamer.” Here’s to hoping Ross doesn’t streak across the field tonight in a bodysuit like George Costanza in Seinfeld.
