(Unofficial) Glory Days: 2 Chainz Could Dunk In High School, Played AAU Against Matt Harpring And Shareef Abdur-Rahim

This video, dug up by ESPN, shows 2 Chainz (your favorite rapper's favorite rapper), then just Tauheed Epps, looking not unlike the 2 Chainz of today, balling all over the crosstown kids from Banneker. He sinks a three, he throws down a nasty dunk (after the buzzer, obviously), he shimmies triumphantly, there's a mystifying dance team interlude—it's everything you could want from a video of 2 Chainz playing high school basketball in 1995. He never yells "2 Chainz"—at least audibly—but tracing the evolution from the celebratory shimmy to his signature ad-lib is so easy we won't even do it.

The ESPN: The Magazine story that goes with the video (essentially an oral history of 2 Chainz, the basketball player) includes the wonderful detail that 2 Chainz "got some attention from the University of Memphis, which was then looking for a silky, tall guard to replace Penny Hardaway." I think we all know who ended up with the better career. Be sure to click over, if only to hear a Memphis assistant coach describe 2 Chainz—the guy who raps relentlessly about having sex with other people's girlfriends—as "a really nice young man."