WASHINGTON — If the Wizards don’t make a deep run into this year’s NBA playoffs, you can’t hang it on Styme.
For the third straight season, the D.C.-based rapper, one of the Wizards’ biggest fans, has recorded a Wizards playoff anthem, meant to fire up the team and the fans in the postseason. This year’s song is called “Beast Mode.”
“Right now, the way the team is playing, it’s time to turn it up a notch. It’s time for our whole team to go into Beast Mode because it’s the playoffs,” Styme said.
The Wizards won the Southeast Division title this year, winning 49 games in the regular season — the most regular season wins and the last division title since the 1978-79 team, then known as the Bullets. They last won the NBA Championship in 1978.
Styme, 26, recently headlined at the Fillmore Howard Theater and also performed at the Verizon Center in a show March 17, following the Wizards’ 112-107 win over the Chicago Bulls.
Last season, Styme recorded the song “DC Rising,” but the Wizards were flat and off-key, failing to make the playoffs.
His first Wizard playoff anthem, “I’m Gettin It,” provided the soundtrack for the Wizards’ playoff run in 2015. But the Wizards lost to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the playoffs, four games to two.
“They beat us (two years ago). That’s cool — we coming for payback. They know what time it is,” Styme said.
“I really believe the team we have right now, nobody in the East can stop us. … We definitely going all the way this year.”
