On Nov. 25, 2009, Drake released the music video for his breakout hit “Forever,” which featured Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem. It’s considered one of the greatest collaborations in rap history, with memorable verses from four of the most commercially successful artists ever.
Little did you know, there’s a Philadelphia Phillies connection in the video.
While the song ended up being way more popular than the documentary, the hit was originally made for the soundtrack to the film “More Than A Game.” The doc focused on LeBron James’ time at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, and the success that he and his teammates — dubbed the “The Fab Five” — had in their time together.
So while the video featured Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem, it also worked in footage and pictures from James’ time as a high-school phenom. At 3:31 — right as Drake was singing the hook about how he “wanted this shit forever” — a familiar face popped up interviewing James. It was Gregg Murphy, host of Phillies Nation TV and pre and post-game coverage on The Phillies Radio Network.
Murphy was doing courtside coverage for CN8 of LeBron’s high school game against Strawberry Mansion at the Palestra on Dec. 22, 2002. James — playing for the Fighting Irish of St. Vincent-St. Mary’s High School in Akron, Ohio — put on a show in front of a crowd that included Allen Iverson. James scored 28 points, while adding in seven steals and eight rebounds.
Following an 85-47 victory over Strawberry Mansion, a teenage James was interviewed by Murphy.
“I was doing courtside, and after the game interviewed LeBron,” Murphy recalled. “Obviously, someone took a picture of it. I didn’t know that at the time.”
It would be nearly seven years before Murphy became aware of the picture’s existence in rather remarkable fashion.
Producer Dan Roche came up to Murphy one day in the newsroom of Comcast SportsNet with some news.
“He said ‘Hey, do you know that you’re in a Drake video?’
And I said ‘I don’t know … what does that mean? A Drake video?’
And he said ‘You know, the singer Drake has a video out, this song Forever’. And he said ‘you’re in it.’
Sure enough, Roche pulled up the video on YouTube — a platform that didn’t even exist at the time of the picture being taken — and showed Murphy his cameo.
“So he showed me, and I was, I had no idea,” Murphy admitted. “I thought it was funny.”
Murphy wasn’t aware of the up-and-coming rapper, who would drop his debut studio album “Thank Me Later” less than a year after the “Forever” video. But Drake had turned some level of fame from being in the TV show “Degrassi” into a series of successful mixtape releases online.
While Murphy didn’t have a preexisting knowledge of Drake before being featured in his video, his kids did.
“I went home and I told my teenage kids ‘Hey, I’m in this video, this Drake guy.’ And they went nuts,” Murphy remembered fondly. “They thought it was the coolest thing ever. And [they were] telling their friends ‘My dad’s in a Drake video.'”
Drake signed to Lil Wayne’s “Young Money Records” in June of 2009, and has become one of the most successful artists of the streaming era ever since. “Forever” remains the seventh-most viewed video on Drake’s YouTube page, with 386 million views.
“Well, I’m sure they’re not viewing it for me,” Murphy said jokingly. “But yeah, it’s funny. It’s an odd thing. It was just a quick moment in my career. I’ve gotten a chance to do a lot of cool things, but interviewing LeBron was cool, especially back then.”
Does Murphy remember the interview of LeBron that landed him in the music video?
“I do remember,” Murphy said. “Because I remember thinking here’s this high school young man, who the whole world is kind of clamoring at his doors and he could not have been more gracious and more polite and just genuinely nice to be around in the game that I covered.
“And I’ve since run into him once or twice over the years,” Murphy continued. “Certainly, he doesn’t remember that. But he’s always struck me as a guy that kind of got it in terms of the media. And I don’t know who was coaching him back then in terms of ‘Here’s what you need to do.’ But he did it really well. I remember that interview being really good. So yeah, I always remember that fondly.”
As for the video, Murphy said it’s a running joke in his family whenever one of the four rappers featured in the video are mentioned that he goes way back with them. In a decorated sports media career, being featured in the “Forever” video is the least likely achievement on Murphy’s resume, but a noteworthy one nonetheless.
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