Coming out of a 5-year/$21 million contract with the Cavaliers in 2013, Daniel "Boobie" Gibson was injured and coming off of one of his worst seasons as a pro. He told Vlad TV in October 2014 that while injured, he took some time away from the game and discovered new parts to his life. Apparently, one of those things is rap.
"I like to write a lot. In me writing, I never thought about putting it to music," Gibson told Vlad TV. "I used to write little poems, write my thoughts—my release, so to say. When I stopped playing ball—going through my situation, figuring out my issues—what happened was, I found a place to be able to vent without nobody around."
"I think some people think NBA players do it [rap] for the money. I'm addicted to more so the art of it. If I put music out, it would be for them to feel me. I'm not even worried about trying to sell records. It's basically me writing my poetry to music."
Seven months removed from that interview, and now we have Boobie's first music video, or "musical short" as he calls it. On "Suicide," Boobie makes clear allusions to Ferguson, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray throughout, rapping with a strong message: Black lives matter, so don't shoot us.
Shots of actors choking him out on the ground and a final shooting scene are included too—strange visuals to watch, but fitting to the raps. Gibson also touches on some of the broader cultures within the Black community, rapping “We went from being chained and whipped to identifying our success through chains and whips / This cannot be it.”
Okay, so his bars and flow aren't any good, but the baller-turned-poet-turned-rapper has poignant thoughts on racism in America. The video is random—after all, this is Boobie Gibson, the man whose ugly separation from Keyshia Cole got played out in public, and now he's been portrayed as a fictionalized Mike Brown—but it's not out of place. During a time of heightened race sensitivities thanks to Black men being killed at the hands of white cops, Gibson's ideas and feelings as a young black millionaire in America are completely valid, and frankly, welcome.
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[via Daniel Gibson on YouTube]
