Jayson Tatum Includes Jay-Z, Drake, and Nelly Among His Top 5 Rappers

Jayson Tatum returned to Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s podcast, All the Smoke, to reveal his top five rappers.

Barnes got right to it, asking Tatum who makes up his “starting five in the rap game?”

“Hov is the greatest, he’s the goat. I got Drake at No. 2. Drake my favorite, but Hov is the greatest,” Tatum said, naming Lil Wayne as his No. 3 pick. “Them three is GOATs.”

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“Wayne is my GOAT,” Barnes responded.

“Biggie No. 4. I’ll throw Nelly in there,” he added, rounding out his top five with the fellow St. Louis native.

“You got to,” Jackson said, prompting Tatum to say, “Country Grammar went diamond.”

It’s no surprise that Tatum named the 6 God in his top five. In 2023—pre-Kendrick Lamar beef—the Boston Celtics power forward popped out to Drake and 21 Savage’s It’s All a Blur Tour stop in Boston.

Tatum later posted photos of himself and Drizzy from the show, captioning the Instagram series, “These days.”

The 27-year-old appeared on All the Smoke in 2020, revealing that he initially didn’t want to play for Boston until his former Duke coach, Coach K, persuaded him.

“‘Jayson, the Celtics called, they want you to come work out. I think Brad Stevens is a great coach, and it’s a great place to be. You’ll learn a lot,’” Coach K told Tatum back in 2017, per CBS News. “So I’m like, ‘Ugh, all right. I’ll go.'”

Part of his hesitation was that he didn’t know if he would get much time on the court since the Celtics had just finished as the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.

“There was a part of me that didn’t want to go to Boston because they just were the No. 1 team in the East. They had Isaiah Thomas, Al Horford, [Marcus] Smart, [Jaylen Brown], Jae Crowder,” Tatum explained. “I was like, ‘Man, I’m not going to play. I’m trying to get buckets.'”