Jesse Itzler Wrote the Greatest Hype Song in History

In honor of the Knicks playing their 7th playoff game in 10 years this evening, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite Sports X Business crossover anecdotes ever.

In 1992, a 22-year-old white rapper dropped a tape off at the Knicks offices at Madison Square Garden.

The song was “Go New York Go New York Go” and pretty soon it would become the unofficially official hype song of the New York Knicks.

The rapper was Jesse Itzler, the current minority owner of the Atlanta Hawks.

Itzler made his fortune as the former founder of one of the world’s largest private jet companies in the world (Marquis Jets was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 2009 for an undisclosed sum, but considering the company had $700M revenue in the previous year, it must have been Big Money).

He also played a large role in the launch of ZICO Coconut Water (acquired by Coca-Cola for, you guessed it, an undisclosed sum) and is an NYT Best-Selling Author (sick flex dude so is Trump Jr.).

But back to the task at hand.

Itzler had landed a few songs on MTV as a teenager in the ‘80s, but quickly lost momentum. By the early ‘90s, he was primarily writing jingles for radio commercials and whatever else unglamorous work he could find.

Then, lightning struck.

A clothing company approached him to write them a jingle. As it so happened, the owner of the company was none other than the wife of Ernie Grunfeld, General Manager of the Knicks.

Itzler reportedly asked if he could write a song for the Knicks… and for some reason he was given the green light.

According to Izler: “I recorded it in my apartment which was the crawl space of a tiny loft. We recorded the demo in one take directly onto a cassette. I knew right away this was going to be big. IMMEDIATELY.”

He then borrowed $5K to pay production costs for the final version of the song.

Itzler was right, it was going to be big. The Knicks paid him just $5K, but it ignited a niche NBA ghostwriting career — after the song debuted Itzler was hired by the Lakers, Wizards, and even tasked with writing the NBA’s slogan “I Love This Game” (I could have written that one too Jesse).

"There's nothing like going to the Garden and hearing your song on the loudspeaker with 20,000 people waving their towels… It's as close to being Jay-Z as I'll ever be."