Long before he was an NBA champion, Kyrie Irving was a viral sensation, and not just because of his insane handles, although that part certainly didn’t hurt. Ultimately, it was because of an ingenuous little marketing ploy by Pepsi, who had Irving dress up like an old man and crash some pick-up games as “Uncle Drew.”
Those games were totally staged, but it didn’t matter because audiences loved the concept. It ballooned out from there with several more installments featuring a star-studded cast of current and former NBA players. It was such a cash cow that they decided to turn it into a full-length feature film that is set to hit theaters next weekend.
Now, it’s certainly debatable whether it needed to be turned into a movie, and it remains to be seen whether Uncle Drew is any good, but for now, the hype is real. Irving himself just offered us another teaser in the form of a brief behind-the-scenes look at an R&B song, aptly titled “Ridiculous,” that he apparently recorded for the flick.
Credit where credit’s due, it’s an undeniably catchy tune, and it appears Irving has a pretty decent singing voice, even if there was a healthy dose of studio magic that went into the production, as there always is.
It’s a cliche that all ballers want to be rappers and vice versa, so it’ll be interesting to see whether this ends up being a one-time thing for Irving or whether he has musical aspirations that he’ll continue to explore in the future.
