Sports

The NBA is heading to the Bay Area for All-Star weekend in 2025, as the Golden State Warriors and the Chase Center will play host to the league’s annual midseason showcase. The weekend is a celebration of the very best the NBA has to offer, and even as Adam Silver and co. seem hell-bent on fixing some perceived problems with the All-Star Game itself, the opportunity to gather and acknowledge how great the game of basketball can be makes the whole weekend worth it.

Beyond the celebration of the sport, All-Star weekend doubles as an opportunity to celebrate the host city. This time around, that means celebrating the Bay Area as a place that has made countless contributions to the worlds of basketball, music, and culture, and one way that’s happening is an upcoming project via Golden State Entertainment, the Golden State Warriors’ record label: For The Soil, a full-length, All-Star themed album that features some of the most prominent names from the Bay.

That includes P-Lo, who is spearheading the project in conjunction with Golden State Entertainment. So far, we’ve gotten one song that will appear on the album, “Players Holiday ’25,” which features P-Lo and a who’s who of big names from the Bay: Saweetie, G-Eazy, LaRussell, Larry June, Kamaiyah, Thuy, and YMTK. Other Bay Area icons, like E-40 and Too Short, will also appear on the album when it releases in 2025 — P-Lo was asked by GSE if he wanted to get any artists who weren’t from the Bay Area, but he wanted to “make sure we’re all represented.” And besides, it’s not like booking talent was hard once he started to ask around.

“Oh, no no no,” P-Lo responded when DIME asked if it was at all difficult to recruit artists from the Bay. “I think it’s a testament to all those great artists and my relationships with them. It was nothing but a, ‘Hey, I’m doing this, doing this with the Warriors, I need you on this.’ And everyone just kind of like jumped on board. And I think that’s something so special about the Bay, because I think people understand the bigger picture of what’s going on, everyone’s down to do it. So, it was dope, especially, like, ‘Players Holiday,’ for all those artists to come together on one day, I don’t think that ever happens — just everyone’s schedule and all that stuff. And it was perfect.”

P-Lo — a longtime Warriors fan who has done everything from providing in-arena music to enjoying Hennessy on Klay Thompson’s float during one of the team’s championship parades — described the environment on the set for the “Players Holiday ’25” video as “amazing,” as the opportunity to get that much talent and creativity into one place with a collection of “good people” is not something you see every day. He offered an anecdote to show just how special this project was, as he said Kamaiyah and G-Eazy couldn’t believe Larry June was part of the track because both of them reached out to him with songs in the past, and both times, they were left on read.

It was, of course, an opportunity to create something cool that represents the culture of uniqueness and innovation which defines the Bay — P-Lo wants the entire album to showcase that exact thing. But as you watch the video for “Players Holiday ’25,” you can’t help but notice that a core value that has come to define Steve Kerr’s tenure as head coach of the Warriors is prevalent. Kerr has spent years talking about the importance of joy in how Golden State operates, and P-Lo confirmed that the feeling of joy was everywhere on set.

“That’s literally what it was — literally, everyone was like, happy to be around each other, everyone was just happy just to see unity,” P-Lo says. “And I think we’re taking from the team, and strength in numbers, and being this deep team. And I feel like that’s what the Bay Area rap scene is — we’re deep, we’re strong, and we want to represent the Warriors.”

As for those Warriors, the team is doing an excellent job of generating some excitement ahead of the All-Star Game. The team is currently 12-7, which puts them in fourth place in the Western Conference at this early point in the season. All P-Lo wanted was for the team to get off to a hot start, one that would afford them a bit of a cushion once the slog that is the middle of the season rolled around.

He’s especially happy with the team’s depth, even after De’Anthony Melton tore his ACL. Despite the fact that they weren’t able to pull off a big swing for a star on the trade market, P-Lo expected that the Warriors would win a bunch of games due to the veteran additions they made in the summer — Melton, Buddy Hield, Kyle Anderson — and of course, having things like an Andrew Wiggins bounce back, Draymond Green still being Draymond Green, and Steph Curry playing at an elite level this late into his career helps, too.

“I knew this was going to be a deeper team, especially with all those veterans coming in,” P-Lo says. “But I didn’t expect us to start out this fast, though. Like, I knew we were going to be a good team, but I didn’t expect us to be first in the West off the rip.”

Curry is almost certainly going to play in the All-Star Game, and if the team keeps winning, there’s a chance Kerr ends up coaching one of the teams under the NBA’s new format in his home building. Maybe someone like Jonathan Kuminga will do the Dunk Contest, maybe there will be a Warriors team during the Skills Challenge, and at the very least, it sure seems like Curry is going to run back his shooting competition with Sabrina Ionescu, with Caitlin Clark and a familiar friend joining this time around.

Hometown teams are usually well-represented at All-Star, and the Warriors certainly will be. But whether it was J-Cole performing in Charlotte, Chance the Rapper performing in Chicago, or any number of other examples, the music that is synonymous with a city is an important part of the weekend, too, and P-Lo will play a major role this time around in making sure that happens.

“I just want to showcase all the talent we have, all the great, unique artists that we have,” P-Lo says. “And really, because I feel like the Bay Area is always like underrepresented — whether it’s media or hip-hop or anything, we’re always like the underdog. So, one of the main things that I wanted to do is just make sure that we’re represented during that time, and we made sure that we’re having our stuff being played during All-Star, because All-Star is such a big event, not only for basketball fans, but just in general.

“So it’s like, there’s going to be so many people, so many different companies, everyone’s going to be out here for All-Star. And I just wanted to make sure that we’re represented and make sure that we’re heard.”