Though hoop dreams didn’t work out for Gelo the way they did for his older and younger brothers, the middle child bouncing between NBA 10-day contracts and G-League stints, perhaps it’s a different lane entirely that’ll bring him success. LiAngelo Ball, previously known as Gelo and now riding with the moniker G3, and his “Tweaker” are suddenly inescapable in the opening days of 2025.
You’ve probably already come across the song already; a flurry of FL studio preset production, truncated flows and the already iconic “I might swerve around the corner, wooooah” hooks dominating social media feeds as the year kicked off. Alternatively, you may have come across reaction to the song more often than you’ve actually hit play, comment sections ablaze donning the song “the hottest of 2003” or a shoe-in for the next Madden or 2k soundtrack.
How Have “Tweaker” And LiAngelo Taken Over The Sports World?
Undoubtedly, the Ball name’s enduring cache and relevance had a large part in getting the song off the ground. The crossover (no pun intended) into the sports world reaped moments like the Detroit Lions celebrating their claim to the #1 seed with the song as a soundtrack or the Inside the NBA quartet attempting to fill in its lyrics. Yet even in its short lifespan to date, Liangelo and “Tweaker” have amassed far more industry backing than a simple novelty ever could. Perhaps helped by fortuitous timing, the middle Ball is already on the Rolling Loud California docket, the song currently sits at #1 on multiple platforms, and he boasts WorldStarHipHop’s most viewed video in nearly a year, ironically jumping up over Boosie before ceding the top spot to NBA Youngboy in the channel’s archives.
However, we should mention that this isn’t Liangelo nor the Ball family’s first foray into music. During the height of the family, and more accurately, Lavar Ball’s notoriety around Lonzo’s rookie year, music was one of many verticals the clan spread across. “BITF,” a 2018 single featuring the elder Ball boys, reads more like a parody in hindsight (a bridge section plainly tells the listener to “buy your merch,” with Lavar adding the ad-lib “wear it!”) However, if you’re able to look past the sheer archival quality of the song, Gelo’s chops on the mic are a step above someone who simply stumbled into the booth — he’s just more French Montana than Juvenile on that cut.
Is G3’s Newfound Success A Flash In The Pan Or Just The Beginning?
Zooming out from the 2025 success that LiAngelo Ball and “Tweaker” continue to see, this continues the popularity of certifiably backwards-facing music, many already citing how much the song owes to the Cash Money Records sound that dominated the airwaves and New Orleans streets in the 2000s. While your opinion may differ on whether audiences are earnestly enjoying the song vs. enjoying it a novelty (it’s probably a bit more of the former than critics are willing to admit), it does feel like a mile marker in some regard.
Rap being synonymous with pop music at this point means that an act or larger “wave” that’s entirely replicating a bygone sound is more of an inevitability than a hypothetical. Tommy Richman owing as much to past production styles fits the category, but how heavily “Tweaker” borrows from the 2000s is a step beyond. With brother Lonzo and the Chicago Bulls locker room previewing a snippet of Gelo’s next move after a game, the track sharing much of the trappings LiAngelo Ball leaned into for “Tweaker,” perhaps we have the test case.
Elsewhere in our coverage, catch up with our top picks for what 2024 offered up with our best albums of 2024 list.
