Baller. Rapper. Underdog. Don't Sleep on Damian Lillard

Today, Lillard is seated inside downtown Portland’s Rex Production & Post studios remembering the stickup of nine years ago. Scoring the flashback is a lively rap song titled “Roll Call,” which is currently blaring from every corner of a luminous recording room. Dressed in a gray long-sleeved T-shirt, home-cut sweat shorts and his own signature Adidas, the two-time All-Star NBA point guard is on the opposite end of the soundboard earnestly bobbing to the rapper’s flow. “This that neighborhood anthem,” he says to no one in particular. That flow belongs to Dame––Dame D.O.L.L.A. (Different On Levels the Lord Allowed) when Lillard is rapping––and today’s private listening session is for his debut rap album The Letter O.

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After escaping the eighth grade, Damian was sent to Arroyo High School. Although the suburban school’s student body was predominantly white, life for the freshman didn’t require a huge adjustment. He played varsity at 5’5”, one of only two black kids on the roster. His coach was new, black and aware that his best player was also his youngest. So he gave Dame the playing time needed to procure wins. “When [the coach] came on he kind of nigga’d the program up a little,” says Lillard. “He was letting me come down and hit pull-up threes. Screaming after I hit a couple in a row. He let me go.”

Although the Arroyo team became more competitive, the blacktop bite Dame played with wasn’t received well by his teammates’ parents. More tick for him meant a lot less for their sons. Players began quitting in the middle of the season. The coach was eventually fired. The situation was clear to Dame: He knew he couldn’t return to Arroyo.

The morning after the Letter O listening session, a B/R Mag photo crew awaits Damian’s arrival inside Portland’s historic Crystal Ballroom. At the top of the 102-year-old performance venue is a mezzanine with descending theater seats. The lower level offers enough space for 1,000 people and a stage that’s been graced by greats like Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead and Marvin Gaye. Damian also rocked it last July (on his birthday) during his first rap concert. Today, the stage floor is wide-open, bare and mocking the science that heat rises. Lillard walks in with his arms stuck to his sides as if he’s trying to keep what little body heat he has stored. He’s already styled for his photo shoot. Aside from white-and-black-striped shell toes, he’s rocking all black. The rapper is clearly still with us. Then again, D.O.L.L.A. has always been here.

While a star at Oakland High, Damian played alongside his closest friends, Drake, Drill and Pee. For two years the band of brothers wrote and recorded the songs they ran out of the locker room to. When the four went off to college, they came home every summer and made mixtapes to the hottest beats out. You can hear Dame’s childhood influences throughout The Letter O: a reclined, slick-tongued T.I. on the Jamie Foxx-featured “Plans”; a brash, transparent Tupac heard on “Bill Walton”; and, like Kanye, the heart to go toe-to-toe with Lil Wayne on “Loyal to the Soil.” From his wonder years up until today, Dame has been drawn to MCs who not only stack stanzas like Legos, but simultaneously build up their listeners.

“J. Cole’s my favorite right now,” says Lillard, after his photo shoot, now seated up in the third row of the empty mezzanine. “I been on Cole since ’08. I was telling everybody on my team, my roommates, ‘You gotta listen to this dude’…but they wouldn’t listen. Then Jay Z came out with The Blueprint [3] and [J. Cole] was on “A Star Is Born.” Then they was like, ‘This dude here is nice,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s J. Cole!’”

Although Lillard is kicking at the door of NBA superstardom, he still feels like that high school sophomore fighting to get on court. Or that eighth-grader fighting a suspension. Or that senior who almost had his brains blown out at a bus station over $20. Yes, he’s technically a two-time NBA All-Star, but the Gary Payton descendant feels more like a 1.5. Many were shocked he got snubbed from the 2016 big game. Mainly because by February his numbers were top 10 in the league and the Blazers had playoff position. Partly because he was selected the previous two seasons. Truth is: If Blake Griffin hadn’t been injured for the 2015 game, Dame would’ve gotten jerked consecutive years.

“I’ve always felt slept on,” he says, shaking his head before making direct eye contact. “I’m out here averaging 25 points, seven assists and almost five rebounds. That’s an All-Star. And not just All-Star numbers, but who you should want to represent your league as an All-Star. I’m an all-star as a Global Ambassador for Special Olympics. All-star with an anti-bullying campaign. An all-star in the Oakland community. An all-star in the Portland community. I’m an all-star for parents who want their kids to pursue a college education. I’m a college graduate! I don’t brag on that stuff, but we talking All-Star.

“I earned this.”

If there’s anything apparent while listening to Dame, the rapper and baller, it’s that he always remembers. As a senior at Oakland High, he returned to St. Joe’s and torched his old team, making sure to address his former coach on several trips back down court. Similarly in the NBA, it was Portland’s first game after last season’s All-Star break, serendipitously against the Golden State Warriors, where Lillard made it his mission to do what he’s done most of his 26 years on Earth: prove people wrong. The result was 51 points (9-of-12 from three), seven assists and six steals on the head of Steph Curry and a 32-point drudging of the champs. “That game was definitely like, Aight, if this is the MVP and the All-Star starter at my position, I’m gonna come out and take this one personal. If I don’t come out and score 50, I’m gonna be 2-for-29. We gonna settle this right now.”

That vengeance carried over into the second round of the playoffs as Lillard kept the Warriors quite nervous with astounding exhibitions in Games 3 (40 points, 10 assists) and 4 (36 points, 10 assists). He shines most in the moments that make diamonds. Discomfort has so often been his norm that it’s almost become a comfort zone. “The pressure was on them because they had just broke the record,” Lillard continues his reflection, more excited than he’s been all morning. Anyone watching from the stage level below could easily mistake his emphatic hand movements for him previewing a new 16. “[I thought to myself], You better not lose to the Trail Blazers! We ain’t got nothing to lose, so I’m gonna go out there and empty the clip.”

For once, the baller sounds more gangster than the MC.