TV sports talk in America is a broken record. Every day brings the same warmed-over topics (Dallas Cowboys), the same personal triggers (LeBron James), the same stale mix of sportswriters (Skip Bayless) and ex-jocks (Michael Irvin) shouting over each other across the basic cable divide. Only one show manages to cut through the noise without really raising its voice.
In late February an online-only production called It Is What It Is premiered on YouTube to little fanfare – a jarring setup for two hosts who are so far from understated. On one side of the dais, there’s Ma$e (government name: Mason Betha), the shiny suit-wearing star who hijacked the pop charts in the mid-90s with the Notorious BIG. On the other there’s Cam’ron (Cameron Giles), the neon-palette style icon who went platinum with Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella team. The notion that two rap legends from Harlem could settle into fresh careers as hot-take artists is a twist few would’ve seen coming in 50 years of hip-hop.
Sports and hip-hop have been in conversation since the very first emcees were spitting rhymes on New York basketball courts. They have a common bond in youth culture and in being presented as the primary escape routes from urban poverty along with dealing drugs. As Biggie Smalls himself raps: “You either sell crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.”
Lil Wayne mailing his 2010 US Open tennis picks in to our Bryan Armen Graham from Rikers Island is an outlier moment that still resonates. Conventional wisdom has long held that “rappers wanna be athletes” and vice versa … not sports commentators. No one really bats an eye when Damian Lillard follows Shaq and drops an album, or J Cole follows Master P and sets music aside to chase the NBA dream. Cam and Ma$e could have just as easily dribbled down that beaten path. Before they owned the radio at the turn of the century, they were young standouts on the New York City hoops scene.
Still: it’s one thing to outplay the likes of Stephon Marbury, quite another to just talk about the current crop of NBA luminaries. For some who remember when Cam and Ma$e dominated music’s biggest stages, an internet sports show probably looks like a wrong turn. But they were dabbling in sports commentary back then, too. On his sophomore album SDE (short for Sports, Drugs & Entertainment), Cam reflects on his athletic promise and how he threw it all away for the street life. (“Forgot about ball, I was done dude / Now I’m in county in an orange jumpsuit”.)
In the opening of 1997 music video for Mo Money Mo Problems, a spoof of Tiger Woods’s breakthrough that same year at the Masters, on-course analyst “Ma$e Gumble” set the scene on the final hole. “I think his pants are a little too tight,” he said of Woods stand-in P Diddy, “and he really has a wedgie.” Looking back, it was a matter of time before Cam and Ma$e’s stage presence, way with words and lifelong obsession with sports culminated in a follow-up to Children of the Corn – the hip-hop group they founded as Harlem teens. A network exec could spend years screen-testing for the natural chemistry between these two rapper best friends; their only rival in that department is TNT’s Inside the NBA crew.
That It Is What It Is also marks the end of a decades-long beef between Cam and Ma$e makes this latest collaboration truly special. “Ma$e got me my first record deal ever,” Cam told Good Day New York’s Rosanna Scotto. “Doing this show, creating this show and having him be a part of it, it felt like I’m giving back to him for helping me even be an entertainer.”
Now, instead of trading personal blows on hit records, they battle to be the best dressed (Ma$e in his Sunday preacher suits, Cam in his t-shirts and chains) and compete for the affections of Treasure Wilson (aka Stat Baby) – the kid-sister figure in the moderator’s chair. And her knack for finding openings for herself in the conversation and moving the hosts to the next topic is exceptional for someone stepping into the job straight from the University of Miami commencement stage.
When Cam and Ma$e do get to the subject – the NBA, usually – the talk gets real, akin to what you might hear at a barbershop off Malcolm X Boulevard. Because the rap duo run the show and make it for the internet, they (crucially) don’t have to worry about league partners, network interference or sponsors. The sole ads on the show are for PinkHorsePower, Cam’s bespoke brand of male enhancement supplements, and an online sportsbook ponying up a reported eight figures for pride of place. With such tremendous editorial freedom, Cam and Ma$e can take It Is What It Is in directions no other sports talk show would dare follow, much less venture.
It’s how their talking about Jordan Poole dogging it through the playoffs while on Golden State turns into them talking about a rumor that Poole paid $500,000 to Bronx rapper Ice Spice in exchange for a first date. (“He coulda got her a pizza,” Ma$e joked.) Because Cam and Ma$e know what it is to be young, gifted, Black and rich and famous overnight, they have an empathy for the big-time athlete’s particular plight that the average TV talking head just doesn’t.
When sports commentators were struggling to understand how Ja Morant could break bad under his father’s close watch, Cam was unpacking the Gary Coleman syndrome: his term for the young star who’s grown too rich for his inner circle’s counsel. “I know I had the Gary Coleman!” he said, leaving Ma$e in stitches. “You had it first!”
It Is What It Is won’t be for everyone, of course. Those who don’t take outright offense to the explicit language and opinions may be inclined to dismiss the show altogether as tacky. OJ Simpson and Maurice Clarett have regular segments to offer up their football takes. Cam and Ma$e play the Pause Game, catching themselves to disqualify any phrase that could be taken as a risqué double entendre. Each refers to the other by his original mononym: Killa and Murda. Earlier this month Wilson scored an exclusive with the wife of retired NBA standout Joe Smith, in the news after live streaming herself telling the former top draft pick that she had a secret OnlyFans account; Cam crashed the interview just to shoot his shot.
When the recent sexual assault lawsuit against Dwight Howard grabbed headlines, It Is What It Is epitomized the unserious, homophobic tone of the discourse. But credit where due here: after getting most of the giggling out, Ma$e cut to the heart of the matter: the hypocrisy of it all. “We gotta stop telling people, ‘I don’t care what you do on your own time –because we do care,” he said. “Those are the lies that are going on in society. Anybody watching this knows it does matter. They’re outing [Howard], so it matters.”
The YouTube channel for It Is What It Is boasts more than 400,000 subscribers, and the show’s reach keeps stretching beyond the confines of its swanky Las Vegas studio set. At a Washington Wizards fan event last week a young autograph seeker asked Poole – who was traded from the Warriors in July – if there was any truth to the Ice Spice rumor that It Is What It Is gave so much oxygen. (“Definitely cap!” Poole said.) According to Cam, Kevin Durant and super-agent Rich Paul keep in close touch. Ice Cube headlines the procession of peer emcees to appear in studio. An hour-long interview with Stephen A Smith, sports TV king commentator, has over a million views.
The show itself is watched as much as FS1’s Undisputed – Bayless’s bully pulpit. After longtime Bayless partner Shannon Sharpe left for rival ESPN to join Smith (Bayless’s old sidekick), Undisputed went on hiatus over the summer for retooling … and returned weeks later with a panelist rotation that now includes Lil Wayne. Two more Young Money rappers have since joined the team. None of this is coincidence.
It Is What It Is has taken an old format and made it fresh again. It’s lively, truly unpredictable – it speaks volumes without being loud and obnoxious. For those who still have love for TV sports talk and ‘90s hip hop: this remix is dedicated to you.
