Sportsmen and musicians have a long and colorful history together. Both have achieved massive levels of fame and wealth for their respective talents, doing something that the rest of us can only watch/listen to and enjoy. Brought together by mutual respect and flossy lifestyles, they sometimes try to emulate each other--often with hilarious results. With organized sports, you can't really fake it. You're either good enough, or you go home. There have been a few close calls with rappers becoming (real) ballers; Master P had some NBA tryouts a few years back, Ma$e supposedly had scouts looking at him back in the day, but no artists have successfully made that transition. The music industry is a different story, however; anybody with a little money can record, release, and promote an album, no matter how weak it may be. Overwhelmingly, hip-hop is the genre of choice for most of today's superstar athletes, and as a result, a growing number of them have ventured into the biz, putting out some pretty questionable material. Usually these projects elicit little more than a chuckle and shrug from unimpressed heads, though occasionally they're able to take on a life of their own.

We're So Bad, We Know We're Good

Essentially the O.G.s when it comes to rapping athletes, the 1985 Chicago Bears opened up a Pandora's box when they recorded the landmark single "Super Bowl Shuffle" during their historic Super Bowl XX season. Back then, hip-hop was still a relatively new phenomenon, nothing close to the multibillion-dollar global industry it is today. Run D.M.C. were doing their thing, and Beat Street was released to theaters a year earlier, but it's not like you had 10-year-old kids wearing gold grills and "Stop Snitchin'" shirts. At that point it was nearly impossible to even hear rap on the radio.

The Bears were on a roll, with a zany cast of characters that included Walter "Sweetness" Payton (arguably the game's best running back ever), self-proclaimed "punky QB" Jim McMahon, and William "The Refrigerator" Perry, an enormous defensive tackle who helped usher in the league's acceptance of obese players. The team basically steamrolled over everybody that year, and had so much swagger that they recorded this enduring anthem following their only loss of the season. They were just that confident about their Super Bowl destiny.

Clocking in at nearly six minutes, it featured 10 guys rapping, a sax solo, ample cowbell, more handclaps than an awards show, and some seriously insane choreographed dance moves. The single and video was an immediate hit, especially in Chicago, with all proceeds going to charity. The song peaked at number 41 on the charts and was amazingly even nominated for a Grammy, losing to Prince. The Bears went on to destroy New England in the Super Bowl and stake their claim as the first rapping pro athletes (not counting Mohammed Ali). But there were plenty more to come...

From the Ring to the Studio

No strangers to the worlds of theatrics and bravado, it makes perfect sense for wrestlers to get into the rap game. In 1985, the WWF released a compilation entitled The Wrestling Album, featuring most of the era's key figures, including Rowdy Roddy Piper, Nikolai Volkoff, and Junkyard Dog, among others. Stylistically it was all over the place, with forays into rap, rock, country, new wave, and even oldies, but it became the first in a long line of wrestler-related albums over the years. WWE Aggression!, arguably the most musically "legit" of the bunch (relatively), surfaced in 2000, and focused more on actual emcees such as Snoop, Kool Keith, O.D.B., and Ice-T.

The year 2000 also saw the release of KMS, the debut solo album from Hawaiian-born sumo grand champion Konishiki. Though it flew way below the radar, it's actually a very enjoyable record, heavy on the G-funk-influenced production, with a cameo from one of the Bone Thugs guys. Konishiki raps, sings, and even does some spoken word on here, and in terms of mellow, profanity-free party jams, it's quite solid. He has dropped several other albums since then, but they're nearly impossible to find in stores on the mainland.

Inexplicably, old-school wrestler/Slim Jim salesman Macho Man Randy Savage put out a rap album in 2003 called Be a Man, where he calls out Hulk Hogan (who has put out a few records himself), and generally just bugs out over rock guitars and Swizz Beatz-esque club beats. Pro boxer Roy Jones Jr. has two full-lengths out, Round One: The Album and Body Head Bangerz Vol. 1, enlisting lyrical help from Scarface, Mystikal, and Juvenile, among others. Neither album blew up, but Roy is still involved in the label side of things (as is Evander Holyfield) and just recently signed Bone Crusher to his label Body Head Entertainment.

Big Shaq Attack

Without question the most well-known athlete rapper, Shaquille O'Neil actually scored a major label (Jive) for his 1993 debut Shaq Diesel, and convinced some pretty prominent guests--Erick Sermon, A Tribe Called Quest--to get onboard. The somewhat misleadingly titled single "(I Know I Got) Skillz" was kind of big for a minute, and "What's Up Doc? (Can We Roc)" with the Fu-Schnickens was a legitimate hit, helping the album go platinum. Although Shaq was never a lyrical monster, he continued to record over the years, going gold with his follow-up Shaq-Fu: Da Return. Jive issued a Best of collection in '96, and even today the big man continues to put out star-studded compilations on his own label. Occasionally he gets into it with professional ghostwriter emcee Skillz, and he'll still host a mixtape here and there, but for the most part Shaq seems to have realized that he doesn't really need any more solo LPs.

A.I. and Kobe - Blocked Shots

Two of the NBA's most explosive and controversial players, Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant, are also big hip-hop fans, so it seemed like a no-brainer for them to get into the studio. It worked for Shaq, right? Unfortunately, neither of them could really rap, the music was publicly ridiculed by pretty much everybody who heard it, and both of their respective solo efforts were shelved completely.

A.I.'s superthug alter-ego Jewelz was set to drop a project called Non-Fiction on Universal in 2001, prefaced by the lead single "40 Bars." Unfortunately for him, league commissioner David Stern decided the music was too offensive (mostly homophobic), and the resulting flood of bad press didn't help. The album never came out, but it's probably just as well.

Kobe was set to shock the world with his own solo album, Visions, in 2000 on Columbia, and set the stage with a single entitled "K.O.B.E." Only 21 years old, pre-rape accusations, rocking his first championship ring, and getting Tyra Banks to sing the hook, this was basically money in the bank. However, the song sounded like some weak latter-day Will Smith and was routinely thrashed by sportswriters, music critics, and fans alike. And that was the end of Kobe's brief rap career.

On the Bench

The abovementioned athletes are just a small portion of the vast (and growing) numbers of failed rappers--Team Streetwatch just doesn't have the time to write about all of them. Many of today's pros are also getting into the mixtape/street DVD game a la Carmelo Anthony, while others like Queensbridge native Ron Artest are content with doing cameos and promoting acts on their own independent labels. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, here are some other releases you might want to check out.

Terrell Owens' Eagles Diss Rap
Available at www.terrellowens.com

Deion Sanders Prime Time
1994 solo album, contains the single "Must Be the Money"

Basketball's Best Kept Secrets
1994 compilation that features Jason Kidd, Dana Barros, and Gary Payton
alongside Warren G, Sadat X, Grand Puba, Diamond D, and Bobbito

Chris Webber Too Much Drama
1999 solo album, includes cameos from Kurupt and Redman

Ricky Watters Eye of a Hawk EP
1999 solo joint produced by KutMasta Kurt