Man of many talents
Jets’ Bell wants to be No. 1 on field, in rap game
Le’Veon Bell was in fifth grade when he simply couldn’t shake music from his mind.
The creative beats. The grooving basslines. The raw lyrics.
He was hooked on it all, just like football.
“That’s when I really realized I loved music,” the star running back recalled in an interview with The Associated Press at the New York Jets’ facility. “I remember 50 Cent, he had dropped the album ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’, and I saved up my own money to go to Walmart and I bought the CD. I listened to the CD and I just remember thinking, ‘Man, 50 Cent is so cool. I want to be like 50 Cent,’ you know?”
Well, plenty of youngsters want to be like the 27-year-old Bell, who has been one of the NFL’s most exciting and dynamic players throughout his career. His focus is squarely set on winning and returning his name to the conversation about the best running backs in the game after sitting out all last season in a contract dispute with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But he has similar lofty goals for his burgeoning rap career.
“For real, I want to be No. 1,” Bell said. “I want to hit the No.
1 song, the No. 1 Billboard (song), that’s what I want to do. I want to eventually get better and get to those music shows, making songs with the great ones and things like that.”
Bell and his middle school buddies would spend lunch breaks tapping their pencils against cafeteria tables, creating makeshift beats. They’d go back and forth, freestyling lyrics. No topics were off limits: school, home, friends, sports, girls — whatever came to mind.
By the time Bell got to Groveport High School in Ohio, he noticed he was a little better than everyone else, and not just on the football field.
“I was around guys that said they could rap, too,”
Bell said. “When people would just throw a beat on and they’d try to freestyle at the top of their head, and I could just do it for like five minutes straight without messing up, and staying on beat and other people couldn’t do it, I’m thinking like, ‘Oh, I’m better than you at freestyling.’”
Bell recorded his first song when he was 15, kept at it during college at Michigan State and got to know his way around a music studio the same way he deftly navigated opposing defenses. During his second season in Pittsburgh in 2014, he dropped his first music project.
“There’s been no looking back since,” Bell said. “I’ve been showing everybody I’ve been able to do it, I’ve been proud of it. I’ve been striving for it and I want to be the best at it. Just kind of how I take football, because I love it.”