Rap Blog: LiAngelo Ball’s “Tweaker” is the rap nostalgia we’re missing

Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song.

It’s summer break 2001. You’re ten years old and at your grandparents’ house, watching TV, trying to savor the last remaining days of their trial cable subscription. When they’re in the room, it’s all cartoons and courtroom TV; when they leave, you dial in the digits for BET, hoping to catch a few seconds of a music video block. This channel and its risque videos are banned in your grandparents’ home and your mom isn’t enthusiastic about them right now either, having grounded you for destroying the family computer by downloading a virus with the uncensored version of Nelly’s “Tip Drill” video. But for a minute or two, you hear a portion of the song that could soundtrack your days before returning to school: ”I might swerve on that corner, whoa-OH-oh.”

Memories of rap culture around the turn of the millennium like this one flooded the internet soon after LiAngelo Ball first previewed his song “Tweaker.” A professional basketball player and son of Big Baller Brand CEO LaVar Ball, LiAngelo didn’t immediately seem like the athlete capable of crossing over to rap success. But when he previewed the song in late December during a stream with trollish internet personality N3ON, the hook grabbed viewers attention: It’s a mixture of Rob49-esque Hot Boyz revival but Ball’s vocal performance — imagine Nate Dogg if he were a member of the St. Lunatics — unlocks a vein of nostalgia that rap at large has overlooked.

“Tweaker” is NBA Live, pristine Air Force 1s, and AND1 Mixtapes. It’s the soundtrack for a touchdown in Madden, but also the sweaty, anxious, slightly smelly gymnasium that hosted your first school dance. For rap fans of a certain age, it brings back an era with near-tactile precision; for younger ones who don’t remember the specifics, it turns those memories into an enviable aesthetic. In 2024, “recession pop” found an audience; in 2025, “Tweaker” might lead the charge for a resurgence of rap you once heard on the most popular countdown shows and Now That’s What I Call Music compilations: Call it TRL rap.

The rest of “Tweaker” doesn’t sustain the momentum of its viral excerpt. Ball’s verses shift from the hook’s fun FUBU-colored vibes to more grim and violent platitudes that feel more like Ball is checking boxes than creating something true. But that doesn’t matter in today’s rap landscape; a snippet is enough to fuel a massive hit, and “Tweaker”’s may be enough to send the public at large scrambling for as many three-packs of oversized white tees as they can order.