Damian Lillard aka Dame D.O.L.L.A has continuously worked to perfect his craft as a basketball player and an emcee, but during the off-season, he’s focused on the latter. The rapper recently worked alongside Lil Wayne, Mozzy and Blxst for his new project, Different on Levels the Lord Allowed, but a collaboration that will remain dear to his heart is an unreleased song he made with one of his childhood favorites.

“I actually had a song with DMX,” he told Complex before revealing how the collab came to life. “We were already moving. What happened was I had a song. It was gonna be on my second album. Because we were talking about it in the studio like, ‘Who we wanna get on it? We gotta get DMX.’”

Dame and his friend then got in touch with someone from X’s camp, and the two emcees exchanged ideas over the phone and began working on the record.

“He sent the track back with a bunch of adlibs and him like growling…he was doing him,” Dame recalled. “So everything he sent back was on the track, but he couldn’t meet the deadline, and it didn’t turn into what we wanted it to turn into so we just kinda left it. But it was already like, it was there.”

The Dame D.O.L.L.A and DMX collaboration is one of many unreleased songs hidden somewhere in a vault. When X passed away, Swizz Beatz said that the late star “recorded a lot of material” and had hopes of one day dropping a gospel album. Producer Dame Grease also revealed that he has 50 of the rapper’s songs in his possession.

“Yall Ready? @dmx #Amen produced by @damegrease129,” wrote the Harlem hitmaker. “I’ll give the masters to @defjam only … New album coming! The legacy continue. The passion and soul recorded at my house with 50 more songs!”

See Dame D.O.L.L.A’s interview below.