LOS ANGELES (AP) — When rapper-actor Common was a kid, he carried towels and sneakers as a Chicago Bulls ball boy who was close enough to hear the squeak of shoes and the roar inside the arena.
Decades later, Common is helping set a different kind of tone for basketball: He has teamed up with his longtime collaborators to compose “Victory” as the official theme for NBA on Prime, the streaming platform announced Thursday. He worked with Karriem Riggins and James Poyser on the song, which will be a part of Amazon’s first exclusive season of NBA coverage.
Common said he drew some inspiration for the song by watching basketball.
“Basketball has a soul to it,” said Common, a three-time Grammy winner, who has also won an Emmy and Oscar. “It’s nostalgic but forward. The rhythm, the harmony, the movement, the teamwork, the star player. We wanted to capture all that in sound.”
After learning Amazon wanted him as a composer, Common said one of his first calls was to his mother to share the news. It was a moment he described as a perfect partnership from the start.
“You never know where God is going to lead you,” Common said. “You just got to stay open and be true to your craft, because now I feel like I'm part of the NBA in the way I'm supposed to be.”
The song will serve as the signature sound of NBA on Prime each week starting with the upcoming season. It was recorded with a 70-piece orchestra at a studio in Nashville.
The trio — whose credits span hip-hop, jazz and soul — produced three versions of the score including orchestral, hip-hop and rock.
Manny Marroquin, a Grammy-winning engineer, will mix the final recordings before the theme’s Oct. 24 debut during Prime Video’s opening-night doubleheader featuring the Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks and the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Los Angeles Lakers.
Poyser said it was important for the team to create a melody that could live in fans' heads long after the broadcast.
“We knew it had to be something that you could just hum,” said the three-time Grammy winner. “Like when you hear it, you got to be able to remember the melody.”
“When you hear the orchestra hit and those drums drop, it just feels like the game,” added Riggins. “It’s got soul, energy and motion. Just like basketball.”
Prime Video executive Amina Hussein said the streaming platform wanted a “sonic identity” that felt true to the culture of the game.
“One thing that’s a baseline for everything we do is authenticity,” said Hussein, executive producer of NBA on Prime. She's also head of U.S. sports on-air talent for Prime Video “We really want people to feel like they’re part of the broadcast. You want viewers at home to believe in you, to sit down, bob their heads with you, and feel like they’re watching the game with friends.”
For Common, the project felt like destiny fulfilled.
“I grew up wanting to play basketball, became a ball boy for the Bulls and was there for Michael Jordan's first exhibition game," said Common, whose late father, Lonnie Lynn, played in the American Basketball Association. "But as a musician now, I feel like I'm part of NBA history in the way I was meant to be.”
The collaborators hope “Victory” resonates for many generations — much like NBC’s “Roundball Rock” — and opens doors for more artists of color in sports scoring.
“Three Black men creating a theme song for the NBA on Amazon. That’s unprecedented,” Common said. “We hope some kid grows up hearing this and thinks, ‘We can compose too.’”
FILE - Rapper and actor Common arrives at the 90th Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Feb. 5, 2018. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - Common poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Police renewed their search Monday for the gunman who killed two Brown University students and wounded nine others, a day after they released a person of interest after determining the evidence pointed "in a different direction.”
Officials announced the man's release at news conference late Sunday, marking a setback in the investigation of Saturday's attack on the Ivy League school's campus and adding to mounting questions about the attack and investigation, including a lack of video evidence and whether the focus on the person of interest might have given the killer more time to escape justice.
Providence residents and students were relieved early Sunday when officials announced they had detained a man at a Rhode Island hotel in connection with the attack and lifted a lockdown. But that relief was short-lived, as Mayor Brett Smiley said hours later that investigators didn't know whether the gunman was still in the area.
“We know that this is likely to cause fresh anxiety,” he said.
The release of the person of interest left law enforcement without a known suspect, with officials pledging to redouble their efforts by asking neighborhood residents and businesses for video surveillance that might help identify the attacker.
“We have a murderer out there,” Attorney General Peter Neronha said.
Authorities said Sunday that one of the reasons they lacked video of the shooter was because Brown's engineering building doesn't have many cameras.
The mayor said there have been no credible threats of further violence since the shooting, and the city's schools were open Monday.
On Sunday morning, officials took into custody a person of interest at a Hampton Inn in Coventry, Rhode Island, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Providence. Two people familiar with the matter identified that individual as a 24-year-old man from Wisconsin, though authorities never released his name.
“I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction and then you have to regroup and go in another, and that’s exactly what has happened over the last 24 hours or so,” Neronha said.
He said there was some evidence that pointed to the man authorities detained, but “that evidence needed to be corroborated and confirmed. And over the last 24 hours leading into just very, very recently, that evidence now points in a different direction.”
Authorities believe they are looking for a person shown in a small, short clip of video footage walking away, the mayor said. The person's back is to the camera.
“Right now, we don't have any evidence to suggest that it was more than that individual,” Smiley said Monday on ABC's “Good Morning America.”
Despite an enhanced police presence at Brown, officials are not recommending another shelter-in-place order like the one that followed the Saturday afternoon shooting, when hundreds of officers searched for the attacker and urged students and staff to remain indoors.
The shooting occurred as final exams were underway.
The gunman opened fire inside a classroom in the engineering building, getting off more than 40 rounds from a 9 mm handgun, a law enforcement official told AP. Two handguns were recovered when the person of interest was taken into custody and authorities also found two loaded 30-round magazines, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity.
Investigators were not immediately sure how the shooter got inside the first-floor classroom in a seven-story complex that houses the School of Engineering and physics department.
The attack set off hours of chaos on campus and in the surrounding neighborhoods, as hundreds of officers searched for the shooter. One video showed students in a library shaking and wincing as they heard loud bangs just before police entered the room to clear the building.
During the lockdown, which wasn't lifted until Sunday, after the person of interest was taken into custody, many students remained barricaded in rooms while others hid behind furniture and bookshelves as police searched for the shooter.
One of the nine wounded students has been released from the hospital, Paxson said Sunday. Seven others were in critical but stable condition, and one was in critical condition.
On Sunday evening, city leaders, residents and others gathered at a park to honor the victims. The event originally was scheduled as a Christmas tree and Hanukkah menorah lighting.
Smiley said he visited some wounded students and was inspired by their courage, hope and gratitude. “The resilience that these survivors showed and shared with me, is frankly pretty overwhelming,” he said.
Brown, the seventh-oldest higher education institution in the U.S., is one of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, with roughly 7,300 undergraduates and more than 3,000 graduate students. The school canceled all remaining classes and exams for the semester.
Contributing were Associated Press journalists Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington
A police vehicle is parked at an intersection near crime scene tape at Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I., following a Saturday shooting at the university. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
A bouquet of flowers rests on snow, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, on the campus of Brown University not far from where a shooting took place, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Passers-by walk past crime scene tape at an entrance to Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I., following the Saturday, Dec. 13, shooting at the university. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Providence and Brown University community members gather during a vigil at Lippitt Memorial Park, a day after a shooting occurred on Brown University campus. Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (Lily Speredelozzi/The Sun Chronicle via AP)
People hold candles during a vigil, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Providence, R.I., for those injured or killed during the Saturday shooting on Brown University campus. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
