Iman Shumpert has been rapping for years but everyone was blindsided by his participation in the BET Hip-Hop Awards Tuesday night (Oct. 8).
The free-agent appeared alongside Kash Doll, King Los, IDK and Travis Thompson in this year’s cypher and held his own against his fellow emcees. Lines like “Ya’ll shower cappin’, I’m drippin’, I got that S-Curl juice/That’s just to set ’em up, you better tell ’em duck, before we go goose” and “I’m from the dirt the worms get fly when they give Fazon love,” caught the attention of people at home.
https://twitter.com/DavidJeremiahX/status/1181784459848425472
https://twitter.com/seIedior/status/1181725765269966849
Iman Shumpert had me like :#HipHopAwards #BETCYPHER19 pic.twitter.com/BX5ZEGSUDp
— Maybe: Doran Dragić (@DP_Lavezzi22) October 9, 2019
@imanshumpert freestyle in the cypher pic.twitter.com/qntORBtHz4
— IG wordofmouthproduction (@Word2of4Mouth) October 9, 2019
Wait that’s Iman Shumpert #HipHopAwards pic.twitter.com/RBGsJ1MOZ3
— bryson. (@iambrysoncarter) October 9, 2019
“I’ve been rapping my whole career. I have hundreds and hundreds of songs, but no one would know unless I release them,” he wrote in a piece for Bleacher Report in 2015. “Sad thing is, if I were to be a violinist, I would be more “respected” and “praised” for my “talent” off the floor. The flip side is being a violinist takes hours and hours and hours of preparation to become anywhere near good. It’s not something you can do during the course of a basketball season.”
Like many artists, it takes time for the masses to see the talent. It’s something all of the artists seemed to have in common. One can argue how King Los, IDK and Kash Doll have been slept on, despite having solid projects as of late (take, IDK’s Is He Real? or Doll’s many mixtapes for example).
Either way, every artist earned new fans last night.
Catch all the best lines below.