In today’s video game world, face and tattoo recognition and a soundtrack littered with hot tracks is a must for gamers.
After an unsuccessful run with NBA Live 2002, EA Sports went back to the lab and brought in some fire power. NBA Live 2003 featured then-New Jersey Nets All Star point guard Jason Kidd as their cover athlete and keyed in on the halfcourt game; much to the delight of San Antonio Spurs fans everywhere.
The defensive strategy was also a focus with Dikembe Mutombo and Kenyon Martin having nightly block parties on their respective teams. But quite honestly, the thing that stood out the most was the game’s soundtrack.
Anyone who purchased a copy of NBA Live 2003 got an added bonus. They got a copy of the NBA Live 2003 soundtrack on a CD.
The tracklist included cuts like Busta Rhymes and Flipmode Squad’s Here We Go, Angie Martinez’s If I Could Go, Joe Budden’s Drop Drop, Freeway and Memphis Bleek’s Let’s Go.
“It’s In The Game,” the game’s intro song performed by Fabolous and also featured DJ Clue. Fabolous’ wordplay was insane especially when you say things like:
Fabolous had a buzz going strong on the mixtape circuit at the time and was also coming off of a successful album, Ghetto Fabolous, that he’d dropped two years prior to NBA Live 2003’s release. The Brooklyn rapper was in a league of his own, rapping about sports and donning the most exclusive of exclusive Mitchell & Ness throwback jerseys.
Fab was a natural fit as the game’s intro vocalist.
“I was a bigger video game fan then,” Fabolous told me on Scoop B Radio.
“It was a cool experience. The whole video game. I actually got to visit the EA Sports headquarters and got to see the stuff behind games; the real geeky, techy side, that was even cool. It was really, really, really a cool experience.”
The song’s producer, DJ Clue had fun working on it too. “I think that sometimes you get caught in the moment and you don’t realize how big something is that you are doing,” DJ Clue told me on Scoop B Radio.
“They gave me no restrictions on how to be with sound, but they gave me sound effects that they wanted me to actually incorporate into actually beats.The whistle, the feet squeaking, the dunk, they gave me all those sounds. So I was in the studio, I was doing a beat and I came up with the beat and they came up with the rap and I had to go back and put the sound effects in from what he was rapping about.”
According to the Fabolous, the coolest part was that while being on tour. He did a promotion in conjunction with EA Sports
”I did a tour stop where in each city somebody would come on the bus and play me in NBA Live,” Fabolous said.
“I pretty much beat everybody that we played. A couple of them were girls, I had to beat them too.”