In honor of hip-hop turning 50, ESPN tapped the culture's top voices to write about their favorite athlete name-drops in hip-hop history. Below is a collection of essays.
Kendrick Lamar on former NBA coach Phil Jackson
by Jayson Buford
Big Sean's "Control" (2013), which features Kendrick Lamar, raises the stakes of rap competition to the point of him sounding like a lecturer and has a lyric that made Phil Jackson publicly comment on rap, perhaps for the first time ever.