I am a pretty big University of Kentucky Basketball fan. I also happen to listen to a significant amount of hip-hop/rap music. Kentucky Sports Radio (KSR) is a blog that I have followed over the past several years. In December of 2011, just before my beloved number one-ranked Wildcats traveled to play their first true road game at Indiana University, KSR posted this video on their blog:
While I absolutely detest the Indiana Hoosiers, I really like this video. It’s clever, funny and has been watched over 2.2 million times on YouTube.
After seeing the video I thought to myself, “Hey, Kentucky is generally better than Indiana in every way, why don’t we have a sweet music video like this.” So in 2011, I wrote my own rap song, which I simply titled, “BBN Anthem.” Though popular among my friends, I never got it out to the masses because I never found anyone to help me make a beat, it was just freestyle. I even sent it to my friend Drew Franklin who is one of the main editor/contributors of KSR, and he liked it, and said he wanted to be in the video if it ever got made. Obviously, it never did.
The next season I did not make a rap song there wasn’t as much excitement around our team because we really weren’t that good. The 2012-13 Kentucky Wildcats did not even make the NCAA Tournament field of 68, and in fact lost in the first round of the NIT to Robert Morris.
This season, I thought I had a real opportunity. I have always been a fan of the rapper Drake, and Drake has been a known fan of the Kentucky Wildcats since the Calipari era began. The only other hip-hop artist that has been affiliated with John Calipari and the Kentucky Wildcats since I can remember is Jay-Z, who was seen in the Kentucky locker room back in 2012.
So on Drake’s 2013 CD, Nothing Was The Same, Drake features a song titled, “Pound Cake” that features Jay-Z. So I decided to re-write the lyrics to the song, and scheduled an appointment with my family friend Dave Robbins, who has a solid recording set-up in his basement in Lexington. Here is the link to “C.R.E.A.M. – Pound Cake Remix” by me, Fern Daddy Dollas:
Again, Drew liked my song so he agreed to post it on KSR at about 11pm on Monday, December 2.
The initial release of the song on Sunday was played a little over 300 times on my SoundCloud page up until it was posted on KSR. By the time I fell asleep on Monday night, it was well on it’s way to 2,000.
The following day (Tuesday), I decided to call into the KSR Radio Show, and see if I could get them to at least talk about the new song and potentially play it on the air. They did…
Matt Jones sent out a tweet linking my song, and it got positive feedback for the most part:
A few hours later, things really started to get crazy, when former UK Wildcat and Sacramento Kings forward Patrick Patterson tweeted this:
After he tweeted, my buddy D-lo quoted that tweet and mentioned former wildcats John Wall and Demarcus Cousins, and they got into the mix:
So then the track starts really picking up some steam. Another UK Sports Blog, Nation of Blue, posted about the song:
Then, Finis “KY” White, a recording engineer who has worked with some serious hip-hop artists posts this tweet:
White has worked with recording artists such as Lil’ Wayne, Drake, Nikki Minaj, Waka Flocka Flame and more.
Finis “KY” White (top right) pictured with Drake (bottom right)
As of Wednesday, December 4, the song had over 10,000 plays on SoundCloud. I plan to release a music video by the end of December. Stay tuned.
Coxtalks.com 