Lil Wayne recently recruited professional skateboarding legend Tony Hawk for a conversation about the upcoming reboot of his Tony Hawk Pro Skater (THPS) franchise video game.
During the latest episode of Weezy’s Young Money Radio podcast with Apple Music, Lil Wayne and Tony Hawk opened up about the lasting impact of the THPS franchise—and how the upcoming remake of THPS 3 + 4 is set to push that legacy even further.
In the process of the two reminiscing over a game that became a cultural shift, both Hawk and Wayne remarked on the relationship between the evolution of the game and growth of the skaters and gamers, who grew up playing THPS. Lil Wayne, a longtime fan of the series and a skater himself, couldn’t hide his excitement, especially when it came to playing the game with his kids.
“Shout out to my sons,” Lil Wayne said. “Y’all already know I’m gonna get a head start on y’all on this game. Y’all already know I’m ready for whatever. And they older now, so we could bet.”
Wayne also remarked on the fact that, for many people, the THPS games weren’t just fun, they were the first time skating made its way into living rooms and inspired real-life flips and grinds.
“People were landing tricks in the game before they could even try them in real life, like me,” Wayne admitted.
Tony Hawk speaks on dropping the 3rd & 4th remastered version of his video game with Lil Wayne pic.twitter.com/g6FNlxc4gd
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Hawk, who’s seen the franchise go from pipe dream to global phenomenon, revealed he never anticipated the level of influence the games would have.
“No, not at all,” Hawk said when asked if he foresaw the impact. “I hoped people would play it, maybe be inspired to skate. That would’ve been amazing. But that happened over and over and over.”
Hawk later revealed what really shocked him was how the wild, imaginative trick combos from the game, once thought as impossible, are now standard among elite skaters.
“That was just, we put that in there because it was fantastical,” Hawk said. “It was like, ‘this would be amazing, but you can’t do it in real life,’ Now they do that. You’re talking about Nyjah [Houston] and Shane O’Neal. Yuto [Watanabe]. They grew up thinking that stuff’s possible because they did it in a video game.”
Even Wayne could hardly believe what Hawk was saying as the conversation progressed from there. The Young Money mastermind, who has been skating for about a decade now, recently turned pro in 2023 after being sponsored by Thank Skateboards—and even he is still impressed by the level of skill skateboarders are honing at even younger ages, now.
“A 1260?” he exclaimed as Hawk described the real-life tricks now being pulled off by today’s skaters. “Come on, man, how could your body spin that many times in the air?” Wayne questioned rhetorically.