In an article for The Players’ Tribune, Afflalo discussed how he sold bootleg CDs as a kid. “It got addicting,” he writes. “I would stay on the computer all night downloading songs.”
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The Compton student started to get a buzz around Centennial high school because of his business. Teachers would ask him for copies of some old CDs. He also took requests from fellow students, including one who would make CDs of his own one day.
Lamar once name-dropped Afflalo on his track “Black Boy Fly” when he said, “I used to be jealous of Arron Afflalo.” The NBA player appreciate the lyric and told Grantland about going to school with the hip-hop artist.
“Kendrick eventually started making his own music. He got pretty good at it, too. You’ve probably heard of him. He goes by the name Kendrick Lamar.”
“I remember Kendrick in school, back then … and now meeting up with him these past few years and going to watch a few shows,” he said. “To see his evolution, a lot of people always see success at the very end, but they don’t see the process that people go through to get to the level of success that they have. I’m just really proud of him. I think it’s pretty cool. It’s not that we hung out every day or anything like that, but at the same time, I would see him around and obviously he stayed on his grind and continued to persevere and learn along the way.”
