NBA 2K27 Adds The Killers, Stone Temple Pilots to Soundtrack — 2K Music Chief Cites FIFA as Model
NBA 2K27 was unveiled at a community event held at the Los Angeles Clippers' Intuit Dome, where players Stephon Castle, Chiney Ogwumike and Tyrese Haliburton walked through this year's gameplay changes. Alongside that, the game's music lineup was also revealed. According to NME, this year's soundtrack expands beyond golden-era hip-hop to include rock staples from The Killers and Stone Temple Pilots — a shift 2K music director David Kelly says was directly inspired by the FIFA franchise's curation strategy.
Who's on the NBA 2K27 soundtrack
Kelly says the soundtrack still centers on golden-era hip-hop but was deliberately built to span a wider stylistic range. Artists named in NME's report include:
- Mos Def
- Mary J. Blige
- A Tribe Called Quest
- The Killers
- Stone Temple Pilots
"We're rock solid on the rap side, but if that's all we had, we'd be doing a disservice to ourselves and to players," Kelly said. He noted he grew up playing FIFA, and that series' globalized approach to music selection became a reference point for 2K's own curation.
"2K Up All Night": the theme behind the tracklist
NBA 2K27's marketing tagline is "Ball Over Everything," but the music team built its own internal theme, "2K Up All Night" — framing the soundtrack around the arc of an after-hours hangout with friends, late-night parties, and staying up until 5am before heading home. Kelly noted the game's player base is now highly diverse across age, gender and region, meaning the soundtrack has to serve multiple audiences while still preserving the series' core link to basketball culture and hip-hop.
2K's music history, from 2005 onward
The series debuted on Sega Dreamcast in 1999 to a middling reception, later growing its audience through online multiplayer and a cross-platform strategy. The first curated soundtrack arrived in 2005, featuring The Roots' "Set It," Blackalicious' "Excellent," Common's "The Movement" and Ghostface Killah's "Milk 'Em" (feat. Trife Da God).
Kelly cited Tony Hawk's Pro Skater from the same era as an early example of a game proving music could build its own culture: "It would've been easy to make it sterile sports-arena music, but that team chose rap, hip-hop, R&B and electronic." Since then, Jay-Z curated the 2012 edition's soundtrack, Travis Scott oversaw the sound for the series' 20th-anniversary release, Lil Wayne, Jack Harlow and Quavo have appeared as playable characters, and J. Cole served as a cover athlete in a recent installment.
What players remember
Oklahoma City Thunder's Chet Holmgren told NME that "music is hugely important to basketball culture," while five-time All-Star Jaylen Brown of the Philadelphia 76ers said music drives emotion in ways nothing else can. Brown recalled staying up late playing NBA 2K with his brothers as a teenager and discovering several artists who became lifelong favorites — "broke a few controllers in the process," he added.