ESPN's 'The Crossover' Director Talks Celebration of Hip-Hop, Sports, and How the Documentary Came Together

If this year-long 50th anniversary celebration hasn't taught you anything else, then you should at least walk away from this year with the understanding that hip hop and sports go way back. Way way back. Muhammad Ali basically rapping what he had to say while preaching the word back. Afro Julius Erving rocking the Converse in the 1970s back. Grandmaster Flash's 1980s dominance back. Run-DMC and adidas back. While sports and hip hop are indeed two different entities, it's not hard to see how the two have intersected over the decades. Think about it—both sports and hip hop have been pillars of Black culture, both have fought to be celebrated and heard against the backdrop of cultural oppression, and both have had to deal with political persecution amongst other obstacles. Most important, however, both have risen about those obstacles, narratives, and setbacks to give us some of the most elite talent the world has ever seen.

If you are a major fan of both cultures, then ESPN's The Crossover: 50 Years of Hip Hop and Sports needs to be on your watchlist.

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An E60 production in association with ESPN Films, the documentary made its debut on Tuesday, Sept. 12, and is now available for on-demand streaming on ESPN+. The doc features many notable names across sports and hip hop cultures, including—but not limited to—Rakim, Fat Joe, MC Lyte, Jemele Hill, Jalen Rose, Michael Wilbon, Angela Rye, and plenty more. Oh, and the documentary is narrated by the legendary Busta Rhymes. We caught up with director Julian Gooden to break down the production of the doc.

The Crossover is the gestation of Gooden's—an idea that he conceived and oversaw from the very beginning—when it was an simply an idea on a piece of paper—to its final format as a brilliant documentary (my words not his, because he's too humble to say it himself). "It was a combination of Angela at our booking and Chantre Camack (ESPN's Senior Director of Talent Relations) that reached out to people to participate in the project," he says when asked by ONE37pm how he managed to get the incredible list of participants he did for this documentary. He continues: "We got a good amount of yeses and a good amount of nos. We decided into lean into the yeses that we got—you can take this story anyway you want to when the subject is so massive.

"From a storytelling perspective, we decide to create around those voices we had instead of leaning into who we didn't get. There was obviously people that we had to talk about—Allen Iverson, for one, and aside from those people we leaned into our talent, which I'm proud about the most."

The Crossover doesn't shy away from discussing the tough topics—topics such as Ronald Reagan and the crack cocaine epidemic that affected the Black and Brown communities in the 1980s. Sometimes the decision to tackle the controversial can result in controversy. My next question to Julian was how he decided to approach dealing with the more sensitive matters in the doc. The answer to that, he tells me, is going back to the way he's approached his entire career—handling everything with the facts. "I try to base my storytelling in facts," he says, continuing: "People can create content that's rooted in opinion, but because I do Black content and try to tell stories about the Black experience—my approach is the facts. It's hard to argue against that, and the fact is, the crack era happened.

"You can't tell this story without that. Ronald Reagan is a character within the story of hip hop, and it's hard to tell that story in the arc of fifty years without mentioning him. Shoutout to the management team—I didn't really get much pushback because I felt like the way we delivered it was based in fact. Reagan did take a lot of those resources from Black communities—it's just a fact. In the Civil Rights era, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were assassinated—those are facts. These are things that happened, and I made sure the beats that we hit were the beats necessary for people who know the story of hip hop to say we got it right."

Next up was a question that I was really curious about—the archival footage. Julian tell us that the credit goes to an ESPN producer by the name of Frank. "Once I started to build the story, my editor Matt McCormick and I started to see what was really necessary. Frank looked at the script, and we all looked at the soundbites together to see what would support what we had. You go through the process of pulling clips to see what works, and the editor is really vital to shaping the story. Matt did an amazing job. I always give my editor the opportunity to elevate the storytelling. I'll have an idea, but I'll tell them to make it better. He had creative license to do what he wanted. It's a team effort, but in terms of pulling footage, Frank is the one who does all of that."

At this point in the conversation, I decide to put on my Inspector Gadget hat and ask Gooden a tough question. Without spoiling too much, there is a segment in the documentary that focuses on Allen Iverson and the iconic hip hop element he brought to the sports world. In retrospect, that influence is now commended and recognized as the legendary force it was, but at the time, Iverson was met with a lot of criticism, in particular from the media. One of those media platforms was indeed ESPN. "Again it was fact," he says before adding: "Some of the stuff in there were ESPN clips, segments, and features.

"Again, shoutout to our management team who told me to be truthful in the way the story was told. I didn't work for ESPN twenty years ago, so I had to approach it in an authentic way. So kudos to my higher ups for telling me to not run from the truth, because if it happened, it happened. They allowed me to tell the story the way it should be told. Again, I didn't really get a lot of pushback. They loved it and told me they were fine with it. I've been in situations where it's the exact opposite. I didn't get a lot of pushback because our managing team believed in me."

Another concern of mine? That when this year is over, the "celebration" of hip hop will stop when it's something that should be continuously celebrated. Luckily things are in good hands with Gooden. "I want everything I do to be a celebration of culture. When I started with ESPN, I told them that I wanted to tell stories about the Black experience. That's what I want my niche to be here. So far they have allowed me to do that. This was an original idea I pitched and they told me to go do it."

My final question to Gooden is what he hopes people take from watching The Crossover. "A goal of mine is to keep telling these type of historical stories. Ten years from now, I want somebody to watch The Crossover and find out things they didn't know—like the role The Fab Five played in both sports and hip hop. How they were the genesis of both cultures coming together. A lot of people don't know that, especially when you're born in the 1990s and 2000s.

"If you're Black and you watch this, I want you to feel a sense of pride and joy. If you are another race, I want you to watch and have an understanding of the Black experience. Hopefully you are able to watch it and feel a sense of pride of what Black people have had to overcome and achieve, and now all of us are a part of this thing called hip hop culture together."

The Crossover is now available on streaming via ESPN+

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