With a similar focus on star power, larger-than-life personalities, and even competitive bravado, it’s common to see the intersections between the worlds of music and sports in everything from halftime shows to brand endorsements.
What’s maybe not as common, however, is a marriage of hip-hop and golf, but that’s the market that’s been cornered in Oklahoma City by rapper and shop owner Josh Sallee.
As one of the most recognizable names in OKC’s hip-hop community, Sallee has seen a string of national tours, headline slots, and streaming successes for records like 2025’s “Curse of a Thousand Roads,” as well as launching his own indie label and recurring concert series.
But in addition to the notoriety for his quick-witted lyricism and freestyle flow, Sallee can also add “golf shop owner” to his resume.
It might seem like an unexpected connection, but he says that for him, hip-hop and sports have always gone hand-in-hand, from sharpening his skills on youth sports trips to competing on the fields of ticket sales and streaming numbers, games that he says he found himself playing with no real direction and early expectations.
Josh Sallee: It’s always gonna go back to sports, because that was just my life, but it was like, I played on a traveling AAU team, basketball, and they're all freestyling, and I'm like, in my head, like, “I think I'm doing better than them,” you know? Then you just give it a whirl, and you get a great reaction.
You know, YouTube was kind of coming around, so I was just playing around with it, and I got, like, guerrilla marketed into my first show. It kind of jump started, and everyone was just thinking “whoa, like, what's happening?”
So we would throw our own shows in the city, and three, four, five hundred people would show up, and it was like, I still didn't really have any studio experience, didn't really have a refined pen. It really was never like the decision to do it. It was just like “wow, this is happening. Maybe we can make this work.”
Brett Fieldcamp: “Making it work” meant juggling his rising local status and increasingly high profile MAFF events, showcasing OKC’s music, art, food, and fashion, with tours and major opening slots for hip-hop superstars like Mac Miller and Kendrick Lamar.
Eventually, California came calling, and Sallee left to try his hand in the Los Angeles scene. But he found himself settling back in Oklahoma City after the Hollywood grind and inflated stakes of LA left him lost, lonely, and separated from the creative niche he’d helped to carve back home.
Josh Sallee: You just miss your friends and the people you rely on, like, you miss your people.
It's really like a “home sweet home” thing, where it's just like, this is where I built myself as an adult. I'm from Tulsa, but moved here 18, haven't left, and so it's like, for a long time I just had the idea I would like to build something here that is national, that does make an imprint outside of here, but it's here.
That's kind of what it was for me, like, it is such a place to build. The city has just been like this, and it's only getting bigger, and so I really wanted to be a part of that.
Brett Fieldcamp: That mission would become 88REC, the record label and studio that he launched to grow and spotlight rising artists from Oklahoma all the way to Australia.
But that love of sport and the unique community that it brings was never far from his mind, and riding a recent surge of interest in the game, Sallee decided to embrace his lifelong love of golf and share it with a new generation pushing back against its image of elitism and exclusivity by launching the Midtown OKC-based golf brand and vintage gear shop, Swing Eazy.
Josh Sallee: I kind of had this idea where I was like, man, a golf shop would be awesome to just have and kind of create a culture around the sport. So it's kind of just like, I don't know what am I gonna do next kind of thing. And, you know, that was just what I dawned upon, and then it kind of took off.
I guess it's like, golf is as much my persona as the music stuff. You know what I mean? Like I'm either doing one of those two, and it's like, kind of just telling stories with golf is the foundation of it. It’s the same idea as starting a label or trying to get people to come to your show. It all encompasses community.
Brett Fieldcamp: Sallee admits that there might come a time when he hangs up his mic and focuses full time on the shop or even on the label and the concert events and showcases of younger talent. But until then, he’s going to keep riding the same resilience that’s brought him this far, and keep hyping the same community of OKC that he’s returned to again and again.
Josh Sallee: It took some like, trial and error and friendship and, like, I think people probably respect any attempt at longevity. You know?
I mean, there's a point where you'll be washed. There's a point where I'll probably be, like, not going to play near as much, but still going and still having, you know, courage.
And I'm not here to compete. I'm really here to just… I don't know what I'm doing. I just know I enjoy doing this and it's working, and we're just trying to do the best we can.
Brett Fieldcamp: You can keep up with both avenues of Josh Sallee’s works by following @joshsallee on Instagram and visiting swingeazygolf.com.
For On the Scene, I’m Brett Fieldcamp. Now here’s Josh Sallee with “Time Zones.”
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