Washington Wizards use hip-hop to introduce fans to Marvin Bagley III

When fans of the Washington Wizards file into Capital One Arena this season, watch the team’s broadcasts on TV, or even follow the franchise on social media, they’ll be met by the unfamiliar voice of one of the team’s players.

Forward Marvin Bagley III, who was traded to the Wizards last season in January after spending the first 6½ seasons of his career with the Sacramento Kings and Detroit Pistons, will be heard across all those mediums as a participant in the Wizards’ local music initiative, and the community will be introduced to his hip-hop alter ego MB3FIVE. The Wizards launched the Wizards DMV Music Portal in August 2023 as a way to spotlight musical artists from Washington, Maryland and Virginia. Of the hundreds of submissions last season, a select number were chosen to have their music — which ranged from hip-hop to Afrobeats to local favorite go-go — used during team broadcasts, in the arena during gameplay, social videos and team events. In lieu of monetary payment, the artists are “compensated via experiences, merchandise, tickets, exposure,” according to a news release.

Over the summer, the Wizards content team approached Bagley about participating in this season’s portal after reading about his musical background from a local news station. They believed that his music best represented the essence of what they wanted the portal to be.

“It’s just powerful music,” Bernard Palin, senior director of digital media for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, said. “I think he has a great sound. I love the vibe, I love the energy. I love the storytelling he has there. And I love that it’s so authentic.

“It was just a no-brainer, to be honest, to use his music.”

Bagley, who averaged 13.3 points and 8.1 rebounds in 24 games with the Wizards last season, was easily sold on participating. 

“I was just excited to do it, to get my passion out there, to get my songs and my music out there,” he said.

The Tempe, Arizona, native said he has been writing and rapping since he was 5 years old, spending countless days sitting in the back of his father’s car listening to The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and Rakim. He first recorded inside of a studio when he was in high school, and released his debut album, BIG JREAMS, in August 2019, just over a year after being selected No. 2 by the Kings in the 2018 draft.

Bagley said all the teams he’s played for in the past — the Kings, Pistons and Duke University — supported his focus on music during his downtime, and that Wizards have been wonderful in letting him truly be himself, particularly with the portal.

“Obviously I’m here to compete, play basketball and play at the highest level and do what I can for the team,” Bagley said. “But I think they do a great job of understanding that basketball doesn’t last forever and it doesn’t define who I am.”

After four albums and three EPs, including the six-track EP Until Next Time released in August, Bagley believes he’s finally able to express his true self in his music. In the past, he believed he had to hold things back in his art because he was concerned about what the audience, team or his teammates would think of him. His early work was typical started-from-the-bottom (“Can’t Relate”) and the-price-of-fame raps (“Cut the Check”). He called that time period a “setback.”

Two to three years ago, he asked himself if he was giving everything he had to his music. During the coronavirus pandemic, he had witnessed others experiencing losses, and he was still dealing with the death of a young cousin to a car accident years before.

Until Next Time still had flex raps, but he dived more into relationships, from the woes (“Patience II”) to admiration (“Proud”) to love (“Peace”). He used to avoid cursing or using profane lyrics, but there are a few instances in his newer work.

“You see a lot of things that happen, that go on in this world, and you kind of just get a different perspective just off of watching,” Bagley said, “and that’s kind of where my perspective comes from.”

Time on this earth is short, Bagley told himself, and if music is about expression of self, why hold back. Why stunt your own creative growth with the fear of opening yourself up or others’ opinions? This was enlightening — to shed doubt, shed the fear of the unknown, and just speak from the heart. It’s made him feel more complete.

“I’ve always been true to me, but once I kind of decided to just say, ‘You know what, I’m going to do what makes me happy, I’m going to talk about my story, I’m going to say what I want to say, how I feel, and just truly, fully be me,’ I think that’s when that switch flipped, and I was just able to make music that I’m comfortable with, whether people like it or don’t like it or disagree with or whatever it is,” Bagley said. “It doesn’t bother me anymore.”

And the music is not a distraction. Athletes are more than their professions, and they need moments to decompress and take their minds off of work. For some that’s playing the video game Call of Duty, for (many) others that’s recording a podcast. Bagley isn’t the first basketball player who raps: Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, Flau’jae Johnson, Damian Lillard and others.

Bagley’s musical interests haven’t come up as a problem. Then-Kings general manager Vlade Divac told Andscape in 2018 that he “love[s] when players are exploring themselves.” Wizards teammate Jordan Poole, unprompted, told reporters last week that he “loves playing with Marvin” and to “go check out his album on Apple Music, Spotify.”

Bagley said he’s been juggling basketball and music so long that it’s like second nature to do both. He was recording in high school while simultaneously being ranked as the No. 1 player in his class, ahead of future NBA stars Jaren Jackson Jr. and Trae Young. A year later, he averaged 21 points and 11.1 rebounds for the Duke Blue Devils as a true freshman, taking home the 2018 ACC Player of the Year award.

“Music helps me spiritually, helps me mentally just get everything that I’m thinking about, get everything that I’m feeling, anything that I want to talk about, just getting it out there, putting it in music and making it sound a certain way,” Bagley said.

Bagley is a musical chameleon. On one track (“Who Want It”) he sounds similar to the late grunge New York rapper Pop Smoke and on another (“Proud”) he takes a Wizkid-inspired Afrobeats detour. He records music almost year-round and almost exclusively releases music in the offseason. He can’t get in the studio as much during the season, but during that time he’s tightening up his flow and lyrics, as well as tweaking songs. He’s currently working on his next full-length album, a follow-up to 2021’s Marv vs. Marv II.

I tell Bagley it seems that music is therapeutic to him, that it’s a way to release all his bottled-up emotions. I then asked him a hypothetical question: If you couldn’t make music, how would you get all those thoughts and feelings out of your mind?

He said he’d still write, whether that be poetry or a book. He’d find some other avenue to express himself.

“I feel like I would still figure out different ways to kind of release what I’m feeling or thoughts that I have and just get ’em down so I can get ’em out of my head,” Bagley said.

Before we parted, I had to ask Bagley an important, albeit messy, question. The forward has followed and studied rap since he still had baby teeth. He’s worked with hip-hop notables such as Lil Durk and Fabolous. And in 2018, he told Billboard that his favorite album that year was Scorpion by Drake, and his rap MVP was J. Cole.

So I had to know, on a purely skill level, who won the 2024 heavyweight battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. (I instructed Bagley to not include Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in his analysis because that felt like an unfair advantage: The song reached a record 21 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s hot rap list Oct. 7.)

Bagley initially said he’d give Drake the nod, but once acknowledging that things “got a little hectic” between the two emcees, he changed his mind to Lamar, who will perform the halftime show at Super Bowl LIX in February 2025.

“ ‘Euphoria’ is still one of my favorite songs. I listened to that song before the game. I listened to that song just on the regular,” he said. “I hope he continues to make music and drop like that, consistently. But when he does drop, you just have no choice but to gravitate towards it and listen.”