What recording artists are expected for this year’s soundtrack, and how do you guys go about choosing these artists?

This year we got a lot of BIG artists on the table. I’ll start off with how we go about choosing the stuff. So, I looked at the soundtracks from previous years. I looked at what worked, and what maybe didn’t work. I even reached out to the community and said, “Hey, what was your favorite NBA Live soundtrack?” The majority of guys kept talking about 2003 when we had Just Blaze do production for our soundtrack; and doing exclusive tracks with Snoop and Fabolous. If you remember when you bought the game, you got a little mix CD with the whole soundtrack. Looking back at that, think of basketball culture and the music that’s kinda related to it, you think of hip-hop, R&B, things like that. So, I really wanted to push for that genre a little bit more this year. And working with our worldwide music group out in L.A., they have the connections with those artists. At the beginning of the year, I started off by creating this deck with the design around the soundtrack this year, and some of the artists of the feel that we were going for. Again, it all came back to the lifestyle and culture of hoops. So I listed certain artists or DJs that I would really like to work with. Our (music) group would go back and they would give us feedback, and it would be really collaborative between them. They would basically send me music, and as a collective we would listen to it and see what made sense for the game. So, it’s really a great process because essentially we would be hearing things that no one has ever heard. We’d be hearing exclusive music that’s not even going to be on an album because it’s being made exclusively for NBA Live.

…and it’s definitely been a way to break newer artists. Specifically I could remember Joell Ortiz from the ’05 title and how I kept playing his track over-and-over cause his jawn was so dope. You guys could possibly take credit for breaking him. It’s been another form of distribution for the “unsigned hypes”.

Yea, they’ve been great! I mean, a lot of the artists that have been on the soundtracks in the past, this has been like their big break. A lot of people are like, when they first hear the songs, “who’s this guy, who’s that guy?” Then a couple of years later they’re like, “Damnnnn…I can’t believe they had that guy on that track two years ago.” So you look at our soundtrack this year, we got guys like Wale coming up, Kidz in the Hall, Donnis…a whole bunch of up-and-comers right now that people are definitely gonna be talking about in a year or two. We love breaking new artists, we also love bringing back some of the vets in the game. Snoop doing a remake of “Lodi Dodi”, Dead Prez doing a remake of “Hip-Hop”, we got Pete Rock with a track that he produced. We got Grand Puba coming back with some new stuff. Who else? Wyclef…a bit more musical! So, we got tons of stuff man. We even have this Matt & Kim track which is kinda more of this weird pop music – well, I wouldn’t say weird – but very different; not something you would be accustomed to with NBA Live, and we got (DJ) Troublemaker to do the remix. It’s taking different genres of music and putting a different spin on it to make it relevant for our game. I think the soundtrack, honestly, is probably the strongest soundtrack we’ve ever done on Live; and I’m proud to be a part of it. If you look at just the lineup of people we have it’s crazy!

It sounds big…

Oh, it’s BIG man! I would say out of the 25 tracks, I would probably say at least 80% of them are exclusive to our game. So, it’s really kind of something new. I don’t think any soundtrack has done it before.

DJ Quik (left) and Murs (top of page) were some of the artists that got the opportunity to test out NBA LIVE 10 weeks before the release.

Speaking of artists and the soundtrack, I heard the Mighty Mos Def is involved with the game, true?

Very true!

In what capacity?

If you saw the teaser trailer we did a few months back with Dwight Howard, basically revealing him as our cover athlete, we approached Mos Def to actually do the voiceover work for that video. If you watch it through again, you’ll hear every single line that was in that video was done by Mos Def. So, the theme was about “Arrival”. He basically goes through and says, “…arrival is…being selected number one on Draft Day.” Things like that! When we picked Mos Def, it was kinda one of those things where I looked at a bunch of artists and I thought, “who’s a recognizable voice? Who would people kind of instantly know when they hear it for the first time?” And I thought of Mos Def. Another big factor was his influence on basketball. I mean, his track was featured on the Jordan XVI (16) commercial, you know “Umi Says”, which is on one of the greatest albums he’s ever done; if not the best album. He did the Converse commercial where it was just this dope lyrical piece where this invisible ball bounces around the gym, and he just went off on this rhyme. And it was just really amazing. I think for me – everything I think about in this game – when we choose these artists, and choose to work with certain people, it always comes back down to what is the relationship with basketball? How is it relevant to the sport? When you think about it that way, it just kind of solidifies that partnership even more. With Mos Def, it was amazing to have him. He basically recorded that stuff right after his interview on (David) Letterman. He just banged it out and we used it on that video, and I think maybe some people might not get it right away. But, for the heads that know…it’s like, “Man, I can’t believe they thought of that? I can’t believe they got Mos Def to do that for them?” So, that was the goal…was to really resonate with our core audience; and the heads that really just live, breathe and eat basketball and Hip Hop. Looking ahead, we have him on the soundtrack. That track “History” with Talib, with the (J.) Dilla beat? I mean, that’s one of the dopest tracks on this new album, right? That’s on our soundtrack. Then, our marketing guys are looking into other things to do with Mos. So, hopefully in the future you’ll maybe see a little more of Mos Def and NBA Live.

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