There are nights during the offseason when Marquis Daniels will disappear. Unable to sleep, he will escape to a small area of his home and stay there for seven, eight hours at a time. There he slips into a zone and works on his craft. This refuge is not a basketball court. It is a music studio.
Daniels has been rapping since he was a sophomore at Auburn University. What began as a hobby with a tape recorder has developed into a record label, hundreds of songs, countless mixtapes, and the possibility of a second career.
“Just growing up, everybody was joking around rapping freestyle,” he said. “After a while I kept doing it and kept doing it, and when I got to Texas [as a member of the Dallas Mavericks] I had a lot of friends out there that are rappers also that were saying, 'You're pretty good. You should try it for real. Keep working on it.' ... During the summertime that's when I do a lot of my stuff. When we're on the plane rides going to wherever we're going, I'm writing raps. I'm on my iPhone or my Sidekick or whatever writing rap songs.”
Daniels goes by the stage name Q6, a combination of his first name and his uniform number with the Mavericks and Indiana Pacers. He performs in his hometown of Orlando and has recorded with artists including Gucci Mane and Trina. (Daniels points out that his concerts are reserved for the summer and do not interfere with the NBA season.) His teammates over the years have played his music during practice and he has already made a fan on the Celtics.
“He's a hooper. Put it this way, I think basketball players listen to hip hop music more than anybody so they've got a knack for the music. But here's a guy who feels he can do that and I'm basically just supporting him,” said Tony Allen. “I think that's cool because it keeps you out of trouble, gives you something to do in your off time. If he's spending seven to eight hours in the gym and another seven to eight hours in the studio, hey you don't have any time to do anything, so I think that's a good thing to do for him.”
The lanky swingman understands there are people who may be skeptical of professional athletes who cross over onto the music scene. Players like Shaquille O'Neal and Ron Artest have recorded their own rap albums, and both have been met with criticism. Aware of these critiques, Daniels emphasizes that he is not a basketball player pretending to be a rapper; he is a basketball player who enjoys rapping. More importantly he recognizes where he stands in the grand scheme of the music scene.
And besides, he has his own toughest critic – three-year-old daughter Syriah, who repeats the lyrics if she likes the song.
“To be honest with you, when I first had a show I was so nervous. They were like, 'Man, you play in front of thousands of people,' but you're just there and everybody's just staring at you,” said Daniels. “It's just like a rookie coming into basketball. You've got to earn your stripes, you've got to earn your way up to getting some respect. People listen to your stuff like, 'Is he just saying some stuff or did he really go through this?' And everybody that knows me knows that everything I rap about is something that I've experienced.”
Daniels channels his past as inspiration for his music. Whether it is a current situation or something he went through as a child, each moment plays a part in his songs.
“I just try to make everybody feel what I'm saying, as opposed to you've got some rappers who when they rap you kind of feel like, that's not you. You're not really that person,” he said. “I try to let everybody experience some of the things I've been through. I try to make some fun music, some real life music, but I also try to be positive in a way with it and also keep everybody in tune to what I'm saying. You could lose somebody easily with music, from the hook to the beat to everything. It's going to be reflective of you whatever you put out. So you've got to try to make everything good.”
Seeing competition in both, the eight-year veteran compares recording music to playing basketball. He was so inspired by the game that he penned the track “My Awesome Life” after signing with the Celtics this summer. In it he raps, “My life is very awesome / Relax like Kevin Cossum / I got so much green / That's why they signed your boy to Boston.”
“Really it's not that different,” he said of basketball and rapping. “It's really just your words, you know what you've got to do, and it depends how much energy you put into your songs. Sometimes you've got to be laid back, sometimes you've got to put more energy into it. It just depends on how you write your song and how you do it. At times you could have wrote four or five songs and you've got all these songs in your head, but when you go in the studio to do one song, your last song could be a mellow song but the next one is more energy so you've got to build your energy back up. It's tiresome.”
Just as his early life wasn't easy, not every song is upbeat. Daniels wrote his most significant track over six years ago. Set to the beat of Jay-Z's “Song Cry,” Daniels tells the story of his childhood from ninth grade through catching on in the NBA as an undrafted free agent.
The song is also a tribute to his mother, who still cries when she hears it.
“I just wanted my mom to know I appreciated everything she did,” he said. “The two, three jobs she had to get just to keep me and my brothers looking decent, going to school. And I also was letting my step-dad know I appreciated the things he did for us. It's real touching. That's one of my most sentimental songs I've done as far as letting my mom know I appreciated everything she did and about how my little brother and my older brother were doing things. My older brother was [close to] graduating but he got caught in different struggles in the streets and he just stopped going to school. So I'm trying to get him back in now.”
Currently Daniels' main focus in the rap game is also about helping others. He enjoys working with up-and-coming artists. “I've slept some nights in the studio. I told my artist I'm never doing this with you again because you don't eat right and you don't sleep right. I'm not doing this,” he said with a laugh. As for his own career, Daniels figures it can wait.
“To be honest with you, my goal right now is just to help other artists to get to where they need to be,” Daniels said. “ I'm going to continue to do it and if I continue to get better and better at it, hopefully I can maybe put out a few albums and see how that goes.”
For now, Daniels is happy to be a new member of the championship-contending Celtics and enjoying his “Awesome Life.”
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