Damian Lillard will compete in five different events during all-star weekend, so he’s used to spread himself out to try different things.
Lillard has a love for hip-hop music that goes beyond simply listening to his favorite rapper. Lillard is serious about his music, and all season, Lillard has been posting raps on his Instagram account with the #4BarFridayhashtag, and now it’s big time.
“The #4BarFriday concept started when Instagram came out with the 15-second videos, and I said, ‘That’s enough time to do four bars,’” Lillard told the crowd when he took the stage at about 11p.m. on Friday night. “So I talked to a few people who thought it was a good idea to make it a trending topic on Instagram and come up with something every Friday.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of famous people and a lot of my friends and people who follow me on social networks really jump onto it and help me spread the word and get a lot of people involved in it.”
Lillard hosted a #4BarFriday party on Friday evening, at the Maison club in downtown New Orleans. Lillard hand selected eight contestants from a group of regulars that submitted entries throughtout the first half of the season.
They competed with each other in pairs, and with Mannie Fresh on the turntable, the contestants could each choose to rap for 15 seconds a cappella or with music.
Of course the crowd would determine the winner.
Lilllard was host of the evening, and dazzled in a sharp grey suit. He admitted he never expected it to become this big.
I wanted it to just be, people submit their four bars and let it grow,” he said. “But it grew a lot faster than I thought. Eventually, I said I wanted to start doing events and host battles and stuff like that.”
The #4BarFriday rap battle could become a yearly event.