How BRING Turned the Sounds of Basketball Into Hip-Hop for NBA® 2k23

We love creativity at LBB. It’s our bread and butter. And what's more creative than making a song out of the sounds of a basketball game? Doing it three times over. BRING, Universal Music for Brands has collaborated with three iconic Aussie hip-hop artists to create spectacular basketball themed songs for the upcoming NBA® 2k23 from 2K Games. 

They collaborated with three of Australia’s most exciting hip-hop talents (Chillinit, BARKAA, and Sahxl), to create these magnificent tracks.

The campaign “brings the rhythm of the basketball court into the world of music by leveraging the sounds of the game itself and turning them into modern beats for the musical talent to MC over,” blending the worlds of hip-hop, gaming, and basketball, in a virtuoso piece of contemporary culture hamming.

To find out just how and why the team at BRING developed something this original, we spoke to James "Griff" Griffiths, ECD, and Gabriel Gasparinatos of Entropico, the director of all three music videos.

LBB> What was the initial client brief from NBA? 

Griff> Our brief from 2K Games was simple. Each and every year, NBA 2K have a legion of hardcore fans that jump into the next iteration of the franchise. But there are many fans on the periphery. Perhaps they like basketball, gaming or even just the culture around the sport. BRING – Universal Music for Brands was tasked with finding and engaging this wider audience at a key sales time for the game, Black Friday.

LBB> What was the thinking behind a cultural platform - especially one centred on the Australian market?

Griff> From the start, we wanted to create something that celebrated the wider culture of basketball to broaden the appeal of the videogame.

With regards to music, there is one genre that has been part of the sport’s DNA for decades: Hip-Hop. Early rappers like Run DMC accelerated basketball culture and brought it to a new audience, that’s the true power of music. The videogame has always celebrated hip-hop too through its soundtrack, with its annual in-game playlist reading like a greatest hits of the genre. 

There is a surge in great homegrown talent right now. Not just for players like Patty Mills who is doing big things in the real game. But it’s an incredibly important time for hip-hop here in Australia. If we didn’t co-create something alongside today’s creators of the art form, it kind of felt disingenuous. 

LBB> How did you go about recruiting and working with the likes of Chillinit, BARKAA, and Sahxl?

Griff> It always has to start with an idea. In this instance, Court in Session gave us a unique platform for the brand. One that no one else could own. We were going to turn the sounds of the game into tracks on the court; lifting the sound and vision from the game and using it to create original freestyle songs. 

And we wanted to partner with incredible local talent to make it their own, expressing the brand ethos ‘Answer the Call’.

We looked at Universal Music’s streaming data to uncover the right artists to appeal to our target demographic. We then overlaid this with our knowledge of the artists through our family of labels. Then across the three, we knew we wanted to represent as many sub-cultures as we could – and give any artist a chance to be heard. 

I was over-the-moon when we got Chillinit come to the table for this. It’s not until you start talking to the artists that you uncover their passions and it was immediately obvious we had struck gold with Chillinit. He loved the game in every way and has been a player for years. It was undeniably a ‘lighting in a bottle’ moment. He was all in. We then brought in two inspiring artists to join him to create a diverse and exciting mix across the three tracks.

By partnering deeply with the NBA 2K23 global team, we were able to unlock additional and highly valuable opportunities for the artists involved in the project. 

The first? We would release the songs in-game. The second? We would advertise the artists on virtual billboards in the open game-world. These are money-can’t-buy opportunities for artists to get their name and music in front of an instant global audience. 

Sometimes, brands shouldn’t just ask “What can the artists do for our brand?”, but more “What can our brand do for music?". This is where the magic can happen.

LBB> Could you elaborate on the other media channels that you'll be using to promote the platform?

Griff> We are incredibly lucky to be part of Universal Music, the world’s largest music business. This opens a number of doors when releasing original music, and allows BRING to truly offer our brand partners a full-service approach to our campaigns.

We tapped into the various label teams to help promote the tracks – to get them heard in the right places – this is something brands just don’t usually get access to as a channel but it can be incredibly powerful. We were able to empower the teams to push the songs (effectively our ‘ads’) on radio and streaming. This worked alongside a PR strategy that made sure the three songs were talked about and seen in the right bubbles of culture.

In addition, BRING was able to create an ecosystem of paid media around the songs, much like we would when releasing an official artist’s song. 

CADA felt like a natural place for the songs to live (it being Australia’s biggest Hip-Hop and R&B station). They promoted the tracks and gave fans exclusive first listens. Rolling Stone further complimented our radio partnership by allowing us to take the music videos direct to an engaged fanbase. We then had targeted media buys with Spotify, Social and YouTube to bring fans into our platform, wherever they engage with music and artists.

The results have already been incredibly strong, and it’s great to see the artists over-delivering to support the songs too. That’s when you know you’re onto something very special, and it stops being a ‘brand deal’ and starts becoming its own thing in culture.

LBB> What was your favourite part of working on the project?

Griff> I can’t possibly pick a favourite song, that’s like being asked to pick your favourite child… Let’s go with the robot. This added such a great visual aesthetic to the music videos and really gave them a ‘videogame’ feel.

LBB> How did you develop the world of the music videos from the initial brief from BRING?

Gabriel> It was really fun to plan out how to incorporate a basketball court set, traditional rap video camera work and gameplay footage triggered by the beats into one big space. Having really dope songs to work with meant it all came together pretty naturally. 

I feel like the function of a music video should always be to heighten the world of a song, so when we first heard the tracks, a lot of the components of the videos responded to it naturally - the tone, pace, even the colours and lay-out of the sets.

LBB> Tell us about the shoot? Was it largely on stage; virtual production - what was the process of bringing those games to life?

Gabriel> It was a huge day - we bumped in overnight, pre-programmed & lit all of our moves so we could just run relentless takes on the day. We shot at a PCYC in Southwest Sydney that gave us a lot of space to have two spaces up and run stills simultaneously. There was a really special moment seeing the lights dim, the screens boot up and the robot swing into action on our first take. 

LBB> How did you aim to combine the worlds of hip-hop and gaming? 

Gabriel> I liked that it was a highly technical in the set-up - reactive screen content, motion-controlled camera rigs etc - but kinda raw and gritty in the execution. The robot camera gave the clips a really ‘gamey’ feel – mimicking the camera movement of the game itself. We lent into the rawness of rap clips, but with some technical elements timed to a single frame. 

I think that mix helped create a really fun energetic series of spots in the end.