What a few days this is has been for Darren Waller. Today, the Raiders star tight end leaves his home in Georgia for Las Vegas, where he will see the Raiders’ new facility for the first time. From what he’s seen during its construction and from pictures, he describes as “insane” and “incredible.”
Waller will arrive at this fresh new facility having been freshly named one of the NFL’s top 100 players as voted by his peers. He came in at No. 99.
He earned that distinction after a breakout 2019 season in which he caught 90 passes for 1,145 yards, which was the second-most catches and yards among tight ends in the NFL. And he would have “Pro Bowler” on his resume as well had he not had thumb surgery following last season.
Waller’s recognition for his efforts and talents on the football field only add to what was already a special weekend for him. Only this feeling comes from his other passion — his music.
Friday ‘D Wall’ released a new music video (NSFW); his fourth release.
“The name of the most recent one is Between the Lines,” Waller told RaidersWire in a phone conversation. “It’s a song that I recorded while I was still in Baltimore on the practice squad. So, that was like October of 2018 when I recorded that. And it was on my project that I put out in September of last year and then we shot the video like 45 minutes south of Vegas-like in the middle of the desert in some rundown spots.”
Waller mentions that he wrote this song in October of 2018 when he was on the Baltimore Ravens’ practice squad. Which means, little did he know at the time, but a month later, he would be signed away to the Raiders and start his journey from relative obscurity to NFL superstardom.
NFL players are often viewed by fans as being one-dimensional. They must be all about football all the time. They can’t have other interests or other passions. And if they do, then they just aren’t serious enough or aren’t working hard enough. That’s simply not reality.
Waller attacks his football life as passionately as he attacks his music life. That’s how he functions.
Most days during the pandemic, Waller has had either a team meeting over Zoom or a meet-up with teammates for a practice in a Las Vegas park, or training at his home in Georgia. In those days, he will either get up early to do his music beforehand or do it at night. But he always makes time for both football and music and never feels he is sacrificing one for the other.
“I feel like I can exhaust myself on the work sometimes,” Waller said of his football activities. “I do love the game, but it takes a lot from me, but you got to have ways to fill yourself back up not only physically, but spiritually. It does that for me in a lot of ways. It just helps with my recovery. I just feel like I can decompress, allow myself to take my mind off of it for a while. Because I pour so much into it and now I can do something fun and something that makes me as a human being happy and makes me excited and gives me a great feeling. That balance is extremely important.”
During his first training camp with the Raiders, he approached his days much the same way. Practice and meetings and in his downtime, it was all about his music. It was clearly a combination that worked for him considering what he was able to accomplish last season and now he has recorded five songs with videos for four of them.
He became well known for his passion for his music and his talents back in training camp. And soon he discovered he had a teammate who was also a talented musician.
“Vets liked to make the rookies freestyle on Fridays after practice,” Waller said. “There’s like a mic in our locker room in Oakland and Maxx [Crosby] got on the mic and rapped and was like killing it. Doing freestyle off the top of his head and was like doing it for fun and everyone on the team was like ‘Wow!’ I was like ‘Maxx is dope’ and then he told me that he liked some of my songs and it grew from there.”
The two have become close friends since then and began discussing collaborating on a project at some point. Though the COVID-19 pandemic threw a bit of wrench in their hopes to get together in the offseason, Darren has sent Maxx several beats and Maxx has written lyrics for them.
“It’s just been hard,” said Crosby of his and Waller’s hopes to collaborate on a project. “Me and Waller haven’t gotten into the studio together, but it’s hard. I’ve been going back to LA and Vegas and all that, but we’re going to make it happen. We talk all the time about it. We’re going to make it happen for sure.
“He makes a lot of beats. He sends me beats all the time and I have a lot of verses and stuff for a few of his beats, so it’s just a matter of time and when we can get in there. We’ve been definitely getting some stuff ready.”
Waller was in Vegas for two months, participating in the meetups for practice at a local park. Meanwhile, Crosby spent most of his time training in Los Angeles. But soon both will be settled in Las Vegas as the Raiders start training camp. The two of them have yet to firm up anything as far as releasing any music, but everything is finally going to set up to get moving on it.
“It could be as simple as getting the records done whenever he’s ready,” said Waller. “I got a studio set up at my house I just got completed before I came back to Georgia, so we can do things there and send the record off to engineers and get them nice and clean, nice and crisp. So, it can be done at any time, it’s just whenever the pen provides . . . it just happens when it happens. I just know that in time, whenever it’s right, it’ll happen and it’ll be good.”
They won’t have a name as a duo. Waller goes by D Wall as his artist’s name while Crosby uses his nickname Madd Maxx as his rap name.
Last season, a couple D Wall songs played during warmups before games at Oakland Coliseum. From the sounds of it, next season they could be warming up to some D Wall and Madd Maxx tracks with hopefully some music videos dropping soon as well.
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