NBA Star Jimmy Butler Is Knee Deep in Making a Country Album

NBA standout Jimmy Butler is making good on his promise to create a country album, and he’s already produced a sizable amount of music.

The Miami Heat forward has been hard at work on his musical endeavor for over a year, and he already has 60 songs under his belt. Butler’s ultimate goal is to record 200 songs when it’s all said and done.

But don’t expect Butler to sing on any of the tracks.

“I’m like the DJ Khaled of this thing,” he tells The Guardian. “He’s a crazy talented individual. To bring all these artists together and to have them be able to maintain the egos and be like, ‘Yo, look, this is what we’re trying to get done here,’ he’s mastered it.”

Butler aims to remain behind the scenes as a writer and producer. He recently shared a new track with Breland on social media.

A love for country music was unexpected for Butler — in fact, it started as a joke. He shared in 2021 that he began listening to country music during his pregame warmups as a way to mess with reporters and other players who asked what was playing in his headphones.

He Googled the best country songs, and Tim McGraw‘s “Don’t Take the Girl” was at the top of the search results. So, he went with it.

“So, I went in thinking this is definitely gonna piss people off and that was the reason behind it,” he explained at the time. “But then I started to listen to the lyrics, and I was like, ‘Damn, poor kids, poor guy.'”

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After that, he searched for more top country songs and began fostering a love for the genre. Now, his goal is to make an album and prove to himself that he can produce that same level of music. Butler admits, however, that it has been a humbling experience.

“There’s so many people out there, and I’m one of them, that are like, ‘Man, I can do that,’ and you really don’t know how difficult it is to make a No. 1 song, how difficult it is to have all these songs on the back burner. And you got to pick the right ones,” he shares. “And it’s fun, and I do love it, but my goodness, it’s difficult.”

Butler has not revealed a timeline for his country music project. He joins a list of other celebrities looking to join the country music family. Singer Ed Sheeran has expressed interest in going country, while rapper Post Malone is already working on his own country album.