Source: Bennett Raglin / Getty
A$AP Ferg continues to prove why he’s a staple in New York City.
The Harlem rapper brought new life into another uptown legend– Holcombe Rucker Park. Ferg, basketball legend Julius “Dr. J” Erving, and Fat Joe were in attendance this past weekend for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly improved Greg Marius Court.
With the help of the NBA Players Association (NBAPA) and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, the park got outfitted with brand new backboards, rims, and bleachers with possibly the coolest addition– a state of the art scoreboard.
Among some of the small touches are the names on the gates that represent those in the community that helped clean up this legendary park, including creative director Set Free Richardson and of curse Ferg.
“They had this court game where they had a stone wall, and the hoop was on the side, and they played with a stone ball and they would like, play to death,” Ferg told those in attendance. “Basketball was the evolution of that. Doing the research of the essence of this, I stumbled upon a word, Xibalba, which means a place of fright… The hunger and the tenacity of the children that came from the Harlem streets gave us a different type of DNA growing up. Xibalba was a mythological word that the Mayans came up with that meant when you step into this game, you either die, or you turn into a God, and that’s what this court represents.”