Warriors uplift music with purpose through Golden State Entertainment

In February for Black History Month, USA TODAY Sports is publishing the series ’29 Black Stories in 29 Days.’ We examine the issues, challenges and opportunities Black athletes and sports officials continue to face after the nation’s reckoning on race following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. This is the fourth installment of the series.

The Golden State Warriors have an opportunity to collect gold plaques.

But that’s not the reason they’re getting into the music industry.

Golden State Entertainment is the brainchild of David Kelly, the NBA team’s Chief Legal Officer. Besides getting his law degree, he spent time in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the music industry as Capital D, one half of the Chicago rap duo All Natural.

Using his experience as an artist and his ability to connect authentically with others, Kelly pitched the idea of the media company to Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber. Kelly cited Lacob’s vision that Golden State is much more than a basketball team as reason for why an entertainment division was a perfect fit.

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‘Really it’s for the executives at the company to think about, alright, that’s the mission that’s been laid out by ownership, what does that mean to me?’ Kelly said in an interview with USA TODAY Sports. ‘What is in my background, what’s my perspective on this that I can bring there to there to help in creating this larger mission that’s been laid out? So when I went to Joe and Peter with the idea, they got it.’

Golden State Entertainment is a music and film company that launched in April 2022. Although the latter took a backseat the past year due to the writer’s strike, the company did help facilitate production on the Emmy-winning Jeremy Lin documentary ’38 at the Garden.’

Kelly said that the extension of the Golden State brand, which has won seven NBA championships, into music was natural because the basketball experience is already so intertwined with the artform. This season, Golden State Entertainment worked with dance duo Sidepiece to create the up-tempo song ‘Feel The Need,’ which is played during Warriors home games at Chase Center.

‘That connection between basketball and music has always been there,’ Kelly said, ‘but seeing on the business side how it was really being used in marketing and promotion just really made me think.’

Several teams have worked with local artists on music, like the New Orleans Pelicans creating a gameday song with Mannie Fresh and Dee-1 and the Kansas City Chiefs embracing Tech N9ne’s ‘Red Kingdom.’ But Golden State Entertainment as a label connected to a professional sports team is believed to be the first of its kind.

Golden State Entertainment’s artist roster is diverse

One of Golden State Entertainment’s artists, Claire de Lune, creates music under the name Tiny Deaths and is also an NBA writer for The Guardian. Her ethereal sound reflects gut-wrenching stories of heartbreak. She released her album, ‘Spirit of the Staircase,’ in November through Golden State Entertainment.

She explained that signing with the label was a ‘cosmic intertwining of my two sides of my life…It felt sort of meant to be.’

‘People contain multitudes and most sports fans are really big fans of music and art and entertainment as well and vice versa,’ she said.

The label’s first single was ‘Wheels Up’ with K-pop star BamBam and local Bay Area artist Mayzin. The Oakland-bred MC was recommended to Kelly by the team deejay, DJ D Sharp.

‘When I got the call it was surreal,’ Mayzin, a lifelong Warriors fan, said. ‘A one hundred percent dream come true. I never expected my favorite basketball team to end up having a recording label that would sign me one day. That’s something you can’t ever predict.’

Mayzin said he appreciates the freedom Golden State Entertainment provides him to continue exploring a variety of genres. His basketball anthem ‘Season’ is featured in the NBA 2K video game and he released the woozy love song ‘Hot Coffee’ on Wednesday.

He said it was fun to step into the ‘Wheels Up’ crossover with a K-pop artist and that working with the Got7 star was ‘effortless.’

The collaboration exemplifies the brand that Golden State Entertainment hopes to represent.

‘A lot of times when people think about the NBA, maybe you think about hip-hop,’ Kelly said. ‘But our fanbase is diverse, our interests are diverse, our reach is diverse, and so the roster for GSE needs to be equally diverse.’

GSE releases a remarkable ‘Conversation’

Kelly’s bringing his trusted friends from the music industry along for the ride. Grammy-winning producer No I.D. is a Creative and Strategic Advisor for the company. Chicago rap veteran Rhymefest released a solo project called ‘James & Nikki: A Conversation’ earlier this month through Golden State Entertainment.

‘Rhymefest is a fascinating, interesting artist who his music always has had intention to it,’ Kelly said. ‘… He writes with intention. So when I heard the first demo of the project that he was working on, ‘The Conversation’ project, it was first off, the sort of project we wanted to be associated with, the sort of thing we want to tie our brand to and also just the kind of project we think the people need to hear.

‘It’s a nice full circle moment to be in a position where we can work together and do business together, but there’s a deeper relationship behind it.’

When Kelly reached out about Golden State, signing with a label wasn’t on Rhymefest’s radar.

‘I had had kind of bad experience with major labels,’ Rhymefest, who co-wrote Kanye West’s ‘Jesus Walks’ and ‘Glory’ with Common, said.

Kelly knows the difficulties of the industry, too. When All Natural was first starting out, they were signed to a label called Wild Pitch. Before the duo was able to release anything, Wild Pitch shuttered.

‘As a young artist, I was just happy to be signed, but it was a good lesson,’ Kelly said. ‘… That was my first introduction to show business, to the business side of the industry, which is important to just understand that it is a business.’

Rhymefest was struck by Kelly’s offer to be a strategic partner and was intrigued when the Warriors executive asked him to define success for himself.

‘I said, ‘Look, if we can make something that honors our past, that speaks to the present, that moves into the future, I would consider that something of impact. And if we can somehow quantify or qualify what impact looks like, I want to make a project that makes impact, not just clicks,” Rhymefest recalled. ‘And he said, ‘Oh, that’s what we want too.’ And so you know, what made me want to work with Golden State? That type of freedom, that type of support, and that type of collaboration that I had never experienced with an entertainment company before.’

That freedom is exemplified by ‘James & Nikki’ being promoted as a ‘composition,’ not an album or mixtape, per Rhymefest’s vision.

‘James & Nikki’ reframes the 1971 sit-down conversation between writers and activists James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni where they discuss the roles of Black men and women in society. Rhymefest’s composition weaves segments of the conversation with his own analysis of society today while exploring a connection to divine power. He was very intentional about having women rappers on the project to balance his own voice in the same way that Baldwin and Giovanni do in the interview.

On ‘Triggered,’ Rhymefest and Helixx C. Armageddon trade verses about hurting, healing and self-actualization. The song concludes with Giovanni discussing politics and how who’s in the Oval Office, ‘wouldn’t change one bit for me, except maybe I would even have to go in exile.’ The song feels especially poignant considering the country is in a presidential election year.

‘The spirit of where Nikki was coming from is something we can learn from today,’ Rhymefest said. ‘And what that is, is this: In this election year, people are going to be trying to turn us against one another. Democrat and Republican will be trying to pit Americans against ourselves for the power of a party, for the power of a person, for the power of an agenda. No matter what that agenda is. I’m not saying don’t vote. What I’m saying is don’t forget your humanity. Don’t forget that your neighbor is your neighbor.’

Rhymefest was intentional about the lead single, ‘Creator,’ with Brittney Carter and Rell Suma. He challenged Carter to approach her verse with a sense of accountability instead of anger.

”We’re not going to argue about this. We’re not gonna like throw stuff at each other about this,” he said he told her when she thought the song was only about infidelity. ”We’re gonna love each other through this. So, how can we write that verse?’ And then she said, ‘If I cannot extend grace, then I am not who I say I am.’ And I got chills when she said that, ‘I am not who I said I am if I cannot extend grace, and just know that when I lay my head on your chest, there’s no pressure.’ That will break a curse. That will create healing.’

That type of purpose is exactly what Kelly hopes to bring with Golden State Entertainment.

‘We can come in with a lighter touch on certain things and try to give more bespoke aspects,’ Kelly said. ‘…How do we tie this into an artist who’s really trying to have an impact with a certain song where it’s not purely transactional and it can be a lot deeper.’