Jeff Weiss
Mar 9, 2025, 10:00 AM ET
IF YOU DON'T immediately understand Baron Davis, just wait a few minutes. The retired NBA All-Star is a man of ambitions, concepts, goals and imagination. A cheerful optimist, a charismatic charmer and a serial entrepreneur.
Throughout an ordinary afternoon last spring at Davis' studio complex in Los Angeles, the conversation wanders from loose outlines for a TV prank show to marketing ideas for a new feminine hygiene product. He offers light-hearted digressions about the genius of The Pharcyde and riffs about why most men shouldn't get married until at least 35. ("That's when you start to know who you are and what you want to do.") You soon realize that spending time with Davis is about the amusing side quests on his post-hoops journey, not the final destination.
About a decade ago, the L.A. native formally hung up his Reeboks. Since then, he's been a documentary producer and director, a podcast host, a TNT basketball analyst, the star of his own "Curb Your Enthusiasm"-style comedy on Fuse ("WTF Baron Davis"), an investor, the co-creator of several tech apps and the face of a company who links venture capitalists with business founders seeking capital.
It can be confusing to keep track of it all, and the scope of the absurdity isn't lost on Davis. When I ask what he thinks his average fan makes of these far-flung endeavors, he laughs and flashes a disarming smile: "They're probably like, 'I wonder what this fool is on right now?'"
The answer, as far as I can tell, is just weed. Of course, this too is contained within the Baron Davis extended brand dominion. The ex-Golden State Warriors and Charlotte Hornets star is a funder of Cann, a THC-infused "social tonic" and House of Wise, a CBD supplement brand that supports women's health and wellness.
But until recently, something was missing. Money wasn't an issue. Davis made nearly $150 million during his 13-year playing career. He loved being a father to his two sons and enjoyed the perks of being the Magic Johnson for L.A. millennials. Yet for all his Renaissance Man ambitions, a creative void still needed to be filled. Existential questions lurked. Who exactly was Baron Davis? And what was the best way to express his innermost thoughts? Then a flash bomb of inspiration lit up his mind: He would finally get in the recording booth and take rapping seriously.
"For most of my life, if I wasn't playing basketball or at the gym, I didn't know what to do. Now, I just go to the studio," Davis says. "Making music taught me that it's OK to be vulnerable."
Despite playing his last NBA game in 2012, Davis still looks the part. He wears a mesh tank top, jogger pants and socks with the league logo. He sports the same lustrous Marvin Gaye beard, now dappled with a few flecks of grey.
"You can't hide in music," Davis says, kicking his feet up on his desk and sparking a joint the size of a Kit Kat. We're in one of the office lounges within the gated three-building estate, which includes video production and recording studios, fluorescently colored graffiti murals, a basketball half court, conference rooms and ample party space.
Today's itinerary includes a podcast to tape, this interview to conduct, production meetings and last-minute planning for his 45th birthday this coming weekend -- a joint celebration alongside his close friend, the former Clipper Quentin Richardson. There will be liquor and weed sponsorships, musical performances and celebrity guests.
"Expressing yourself means being comfortable about who you are and what you like," Davis continues. "A lot of times in basketball, you have to be what they like."
Before going further, let's just get it out of the way. You can and should be rightfully skeptical of any athlete-turned-rapper. It's been 30 years since the "B-Ball's Best Kept Secret" compilation introduced the sub-genre of NBA MCs (let's ignore the '87 Lakers' anti-drug rap song). In that span, you would be hard-pressed to count on one hand the number of players worth seriously listening to beyond sheer novelty.
Of course, Shaquille O'Neal dropped a handful of classics. But it helps when being the "most dominant ever" extends to your ability to wrangle guest verses from Biggie, Jay-Z and Mobb Deep. Damian Lillard ("Dame D.O.L.L.A.") has legit technical ability, but never developed the eccentric magnetism required for rap stardom. Metta Sandiford-Artest never cultivated the lyrical sharpness expected from someone whose childhood babysitter was Roxanne Shante -- though he did possess a Lil B-like gift for bridging bizarre originality with a humanist ethos. Most recently, Flint's Miles Bridges ("RTB MB") mastered Michigan guns-and-grams punch line rap until a domestic violence case derailed his second career.
What unites most hooper vanity projects is that they're usually designed for mass appeal. By the very nature of being a professional athlete, you aim to play in the biggest arena. But Davis' aesthetic touchstones swerve across a wide-open lane previously untraversed in the baller rap pantheon. On last June's "Steel Cut Deluxe," Davis introduced his Bart Oatmeal alias -- offering an aromatic blast of subterranean stoner rap in the key of Larry June and Curren$y. These aren't aggressive club bangers, but songs built for sunny Sunday cruises down Rosecrans. The candy-painted old school is freshly waxed. The windows are rolled down. The subwoofers rumble with San Andreas bass.
With his playing days wrapped, there's no need for Davis' Oatmeal to disguise his street ties or narcotic predilections. Most importantly, he's blessed with a luxurious, blunt-weathered baritone, breezy cadences and (multi) million dollar-man confidence. He comes off as your cool rich uncle, chilling out after he made all of his money: spacey, wise-cracking and probably still able to posterize you if you test him.
"Bart will say anything. Nothing is off limits," Davis says. "He's funnier, edgier and more thought-provoking than me. The character gives me an open book to create."
None of this happened by accident. Davis directly traces his rapping journey back to his friend, No I.D. -- the Yoda-like Chicago producer and label executive who mentored Kanye West and Vince Staples. "No I.D. has been the ultimate guide and coach," Davis says. "He helped me transition from my former life."
At some point this year, Davis plans to release a collaborative project with the architect of Common's early classics and Jay-Z, Rihanna and West's "Run This Town." After Common introduced them, Davis and No I.D. bonded over their love of sports. But the producer initially rolled his eyes at the ex-jock's rap ambitions -- only after a soft pressure campaign did No I.D. finally give Davis a beat pack.
"But when I heard what I did with the songs, that was the first time I was like, 'Oh, you really do rap," No I.D. says. "His skill level is impressive, and he's a storyteller. [Davis] is a real artist and I'm always drawn to that more than someone's commercial appeal.
"How he lives life is how he makes music and how he played the game: aggressively with a good heart."
DAVIS LEARNED the art of survival on the blacktop at South Park Elementary. This was South Central L.A. in the 1980s. A danger zone of sharp elbows, chain-link nets and constant trash talking. He lived with his maternal grandparents just down the block at 85th and Manchester. They had come west from rural Louisiana during the Great Migration and instilled a sense of discipline into the child. Church every Sunday. Respect your elders. Do not become another victim of the violent streets run by Bloods and Crips, brutal cops and wayward addicts.
On the kitchen radio, Davis remembers hearing the Whispers, the Gap Band and Rick James. Each weekend, an elderly neighbor blared ancestral blues so loud that the entire street could feel it. At 4, Davis's grandfather built him a makeshift basketball court as a Christmas present. He had already noticed that when he fell asleep, the toddler switched from Dodgers games to the NBA. Davis didn't ask for the gift, but it was all he needed. Until he was old enough to play at the school across the street, he rarely left the backyard.
During these formative years, hip-hop became his second love. It started with electro-rap on KDAY: Jheri-curled anthems from Egyptian Lover, the L.A. Dream Team and Rodney O & Joe Cooley. Around the time that he received his first hoop, Davis recited his first raps. "My name is Bubba D/I'm a fresh MC/Rocking on the mic since the age of 3," Davis replies when asked if he can remember them.
The songs on the radio needed little explanation. Even before Ice-T introduced "gangsta rap" to the West Coast, Toddy Tee's "Batterram" shone a spotlight on a common tactic of the 1980s Los Angeles Police Department: busting down suspected drug dealers' front doors with a military-caliber battering ram.
"I saw it firsthand," Davis says. "Crack cocaine took over. The family dynamic withered. Cousins can't come to the family picnic because addiction took over. Gangs and drugs were everything -- total destruction."
It's cliché to say that basketball might have saved his life, but it's no less true. Friends and family joined the different gang factions that ran South Central. For Davis, the game offered insulation from the asphalt realities. But only up until a point.
"When I was growing up, there weren't any weddings to go to. You was going to funerals," Davis says.
It was diametrically opposed to most of his classmates. In the seventh grade, Davis earned a scholarship to Crossroads in Santa Monica, a wealthy private arts high school where kids missed their graduation to sing opera on Broadway. Davis became tight with Goldie Hawn's daughter, the future Oscar nominee, Kate Hudson. The "New Girl" star Zooey Deschanel was only a year behind.
"It was like the kid from the hood hits the lottery," Davis says. "I suddenly didn't have to worry or look over my shoulder when I went to school. I was now a 'have-not' among people who had a lot. I was curious, hungry for life and trying to figure out where someone like me really fit in."
Two weeks after Davis' 13th birthday, the L.A. Riots began at the intersection of Florence and Normandie, three miles from his grandparents' home. At his bus stop on Manchester and Broadway, the swap meet was looted and set aflame. The ABC Market -- the only place within walking distance where they could buy groceries -- was torched too.
"The good families woke up and discovered that there was nothing left," Davis recalls. "If you was looting and it was cracking, you had enough for a minute. But it wasn't going to last you long enough because everything was burnt down."
In the wake of the conflagration, school was canceled. Davis' history teacher offered an escape by paying for his plane ticket to Ohio State's basketball camp. It was the first time that Davis had ever stepped on a plane. By the week's end, Davis walked off with the MVP trophy and the one-on-one championship for his age group.
No one predicted NBA stardom. Davis was just 5-foot-3 as a freshman. Scouts saw him as a potential Ivy Leaguer or maybe an energy guy in a Patriot League program. But a growth spurt radically altered his prospects. He was 6-2 when he won the slam dunk contest at the 1998 McDonald's All-American tournament (he would grow another inch before the pros). Gatorade named him National Player of the Year. And among adolescent hoopers in the region, Davis amassed a folkloric legend.
During summer afternoons in the 1990s, if you had any game whatsoever, you wound up at UCLA's Men's Gym or the John Wooden Center. Sometimes, you would play pickup games with other high school basketball players, college students, or 20-somethings who had no problem decking teens calling questionable fouls. The pros frequently came through, which meant a free seat to watch Magic Johnson ball against Lakers stars like Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones, or sometimes even Shaq and Kobe. Davis was this micro-generation's great hope -- the only one with the "NBA Jam" ups, Iversonian velocity and four-dimensional court sense to hang with the gods.
"I always had a chip on my shoulder," Davis says. "I was close, but not that close. But I was watching, studying and learning. I wasn't ranked that high in my class, but I had that hunger and drive. I wanted to measure myself against the best."
It seemed right that the man who Brandon Jennings would later call "the godfather of L.A. basketball" chose UCLA after a fierce recruiting war. In his first season, Davis was named Pac-10 Freshman of the Year and took the Bruins to the Sweet 16; the next year, Davis became a third-team All-American. And at Washington D.C.'s Capital One Center that June, the Charlotte Hornets selected Davis with the third pick in the 1999 draft. It's here where he shook David Stern's hand in a white player's ball suit that looked somewhere between Tony Montana and Suga Free.
The rookie seemed to intuitively understand the mantra: If you stay ready, you ain't got to get ready.
IN 2002, THE HORNETS moved to New Orleans, where Davis built a home studio called "The Cage," a 7,000-square-foot, Greek revival mansion in the Garden District that had previously been the "Real World" house. By now, Davis acquired the nickname B. Diddy and a reputation as one of the game's most electric young point guards. In his final season in Charlotte, he averaged 18 points and 8.5 assists and at least one "SportsCenter" highlight reel dunk per game. When Vince Carter withdrew from All-Star weekend due to an injury, the South Central sensation replaced him.
New Orleans offered a better cultural fit than North Carolina. Cash Money was still balling at its pre-Katrina peak. When Lil' Wayne wasn't recording "Tha Carter I," he was courtside watching Davis go off in the playoffs. On his off nights, Davis witnessed the former teen phenom become immortal. They even recorded a freestyle together, but the tape was lost to history.
"I was fascinated by Wayne's genius. He never wrote anything; he'd just go into the booth, take a basketball and do this while the beat was playing," Davis says. "After a few minutes, he'd be like, 'Yo, I'm ready.' Then he'd spit flames."
At the time, rapping was just a hobby. Off the court, Davis primarily focused on helping artists behind the scenes -- most notably, Compton's The Game, the West Coast heir apparent who had recently signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath.
"I knew that I wanted to be involved in music, but still didn't know which way to go," Davis says. "It just felt good to be able to witness greatness."
At the 2005 trade deadline, New Orleans sent the point guard to equally moribund Golden State, and the Bay inspired Davis. It was the height of the Hyphy era and E-40, Too Short and a long-suffering fan base welcomed the new floor general as if he had been divinely spawned from the mud of Lake Merritt.
The second half of 2006-2007 came together like a biopic montage. The "We Believe" Warriors narrowly captured the 8-seed after winning 16 of their final 21 regular-season games.
In the first round, Davis led Golden State to victory over a 67-win Dallas Mavericks team that had been to the NBA Finals the year before. He averaged 25 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.7 assists and almost 2 steals. As Davis knocked down 45.5% of his 3-pointers, Snoop Dogg, Kate Hudson, Carlos Santana and Jessica Alba cheered him on courtside. It remains one of the great upsets in NBA history. At 28, Davis seemed to be floating on a Hall of Fame trajectory.
Before there was Russell Westbrook and James Harden, there was Baron Davis. He represented an evolutionary leap forward from the pass-first, gravity-bound point guards of the 20th century. The stats don't reveal the cartilage-tearing crossover, nor the fusion of cannonball strength and 100-meter dash speed with sniper marksmanship and no-look telepathy.
"His game was ahead of its time," says Stephen Jackson, Davis' former Warriors teammate. "Baron was a great leader and teammate. He made us believe in ourselves and willed us into the playoffs on one leg. And he always could rap. I've been telling him to do this for a long time."
In the summer of 2008, Davis signed a five-year $65 million deal with the Clippers. Local newspapers heralded Davis like a head-banded messiah. For once, the Clippers would be competitive and respected. For the first time, Kobe Bryant would have a legitimate rival down the Staples Center hallway. With his movie star friends and infectious energy, Davis would bring a cool and glamour that had long eluded the franchise.
But the "Clipper Curse" kicked in before Davis even slipped on his No. 1 jersey. Star forward Elton Brand dipped for Philadelphia. Blake Griffin lost his rookie season to a knee fracture. The media blasted Davis for showing up to camp overweight. Nagging injuries robbed him of his paranormal athleticism. From his courtside seat, the soon-to-be-disgraced owner Donald Sterling heckled his superstar.
"Being unable to play was humbling," Davis says. "I felt like I had one of my better second-half seasons with the Clippers, but with all the bulls--- there, I didn't get a chance. We had so much talent, but I was gone before they put all the pieces together."
Off the hardwood, distractions were omnipresent. He launched multiple charitable ventures that would later come under scrutiny for irregularities. Meanwhile, his generosity and accessibility made him a center of attention for everyone from childhood friends to Hollywood executives eager to pal around with an NBA star.
You get a sense of it from spending a few hours with Davis. He has a natural politician's gift for making you feel like you've known him forever. But there is no cynicism, calculation or pretension. Davis is a true seeker, always asking questions, perpetually exuding an omnivorous excitement. He's the rare leader who can simultaneously be a vibes guy.
SLiC (Sports Lifestyle in Culture) Studios is a crossroads that speaks to Davis' knack for connecting people. On this spring afternoon, I meet everyone from television producers to an education Ph.D. to South Central hip-hop OG's. Davis tells me that his fellow Crossroads alumni Jack Black was here recently; they're working on a song together.
"At first, people weren't really willing to accept athletes as producers and directors," Davis says of his initial struggle to be taken seriously. "I wanted to be different. This was before social media allowed you to brand yourself and say whatever you want to your audience. But I knew there was a new revolution coming. There were a lot more athletes like me on the way."
A half-decade before Kobe Bryant founded his Granity Studios, Davis was the first L.A. athlete of his generation to pursue his Hollywood visions. He executive produced "Bloods and Crips: Made in America," a Forest Whitaker-narrated, Stacey Peralta-directed documentary that won an Emmy. Curating the soundtrack, Davis wrangled tracks from Lil' Wayne, Snoop Dogg and Nipsey Hussle. And as soon as his first season on the Clippers ended, he flew to Washington D.C. to screen the film before members of Congress.
Hip-hop's birthplace fittingly served as Davis' final stop. While recovering from a herniated disk, Davis set up a mini studio in his Tribeca loft in New York to practice DJ sets and make rap songs. On his way to Knicks practice one afternoon, a chance ride with an Uber driver planted the seed to finally start making his own music.
"The driver told me that he made beats," Davis says. "He put one on and I started rapping and he was like, 'Man, you dope.' So I hired him to become my driver. Rest in peace to Paradise, he was the first person who really believed in it."
It became a ritual. Every afternoon, Paradise played a beat CD for Davis to rhyme over on the way to his annual $1.4 million day job. When he wasn't at Madison Square Garden, Davis found himself in studios alongside everyone from Styles P to Ne-Yo. He even recorded a rap album that never left his hard drive.
This was 2011-12, Jeremy Lin's "Linsanity" season. When the Chinese-American phenom went down for the season, Davis assumed the starting role. But in the first round of the playoffs, Davis completely tore his ACL and MCL, and his comeback attempts went nowhere.
At 33, he was out of the league.
"I WAS STILL trying to figure out who Baron Davis was," Davis says, reflecting on the period following his stint with the Knicks. He then began to realize that his next chapter would arrive sooner than anticipated.
"It was a period of self-discovery," Davis continues. "I needed to figure out who I wanted to be, what I could be and what I was allowed to be."
It's impossible to imagine Davis as the bored ex-jock on a golf course, pining for the good old days and searching for any distraction to fill the void. He had always wanted to act, direct, host, produce, start a clothing brand and whichever other visions had recently appeared in his dreams. The problem was never going to be what to do. The problem was where to begin.
The idea was to be somewhere between Jim Brown and John Singleton. Upon its 2008 release, "Crips and Bloods: Made in America" was praised as one of the most poignant examinations of L.A. gang life ever made. In addition to the documentary, Davis had already executive produced or produced a half-dozen other little-seen films and shorts. But ask anyone who has ever had an agent, realizing your cinematic dreams with a modicum of creative integrity is nearly impossible -- even if you're Baron Davis.
"I sold some projects and developed a few others," Davis says. "But I didn't have a reputation in Hollywood at the time. I was pushing something new, and I didn't necessarily have enough of a voice -- yet."
The comeback dreams hadn't entirely died either. After co-directing a film about the Drew League, Davis returned to the venerable South Central pro-am in the summer of 2015. In his first game back, he dropped 44 points and later signed an NBA Development League contract that fall. But after six games for the Delaware 87ers, he officially announced his retirement.
Davis seemed to be at peace with his fate. Family life beckoned. He settled down to raise two young children with his ex-wife, Isabella Brewster, a former CAA agent and the sister of Jordana Brewster from the "Fast and Furious." Frustrated with the glacial pace of getting Hollywood greenlights, Davis deliberated becoming a music supervisor.
"I connected the dots," Davis says. "I helped artists get on movie soundtracks and had my movie people sync songs from artists I knew like Dom Kennedy."
Davis has an anecdote about nearly every major L.A. rapper from the past two decades. He and Nipsey Hussle shared a passion for film and planned to make a biopic about him in the vein of "Streets is Watching." When Kendrick Lamar was still K-Dot, Davis invited him to make his first television appearance on a BET reality show starring the skateboarder, Terry Kennedy.
"Even then, Kendrick was clearly going to be a star. He was always humble, quiet and cool." Davis says. "I've seen every kind of movement start: sometimes as a part of it, sometimes around the inner circle and sometimes just as a fan. There's a certain privilege that I've had when it comes to L.A. music and music in general. I don't take that for granted."
After his 2017 divorce, Davis began looking for an outlet to help salve the emotional wounds. He'd been DJing around town but soon devoted himself to beatmaking -- even sending a Zip file of instrumentals to Schoolboy Q.
"He was like, 'Man, this is cool, but you got more work to do,'" Davis says, laughing. "But I wasn't afraid anymore."
Around the same time, Davis founded Black Santa, a multimedia brand centered around an animated and ethnically diverse depiction of traditional Yuletide figures. At first, Davis wanted to produce a holiday soundtrack where his rapper friends would spit over his beats. But J. Stone, Nipsey Hussle's closest musical partner, convinced Davis to do it himself.
This required putting a team in place. Davis had always been inseparable from his brother Term, who had been rapping since the Wayne days back in New Orleans. No I.D. was there to lend guidance, too. But things accelerated once Davis linked up with the Compton people's champ Jay Worthy and his manager, Lafayette "Dough Networkz" Carpenter.
"He had 100 songs already recorded when I met him. He wasn't just dope for an NBA player, he was a dope rapper, period. He almost sounds like Guru to me," Worthy says. "And in L.A., he's an all-city legend who gets love everywhere. We were always proud of him because he was really from the streets. We always saw him as the real one in the NBA."
Worthy introduced Davis to Roc Marciano, one of the best and most influential underground rappers of the past decade. Marciano was instantly impressed by Davis' rhyming ability.
"I don't even put him in the category of an athlete who's rapping; BD is just plain nice. He could've done this all along. It's seamless," Marciano says. "Some people just have that feel like they're from your neighborhood. Being around him feels like kicking it with one of the homies that you've known from day one."
There's an unusually refined sense of taste that separates Davis from most of his athletic peers. "Steel Cut Deluxe" features Bay Area icon, Mistah F.A.B., the darkly prophetic South Central rapper ICECOLDBISHOP and Worthy. This year, Davis says he's dropping a collaboration with soul-deconstructionist Conductor Williams, who has worked with Drake and Westside Gunn.
"L.A. is in my language, my swag and slang," Davis says, sparking up the half-finished joint. "It's the backdrop that I'm rapping from -- the place where Bart Oatmeal gets to ride around on his beach cruiser and write graffiti. He's the character hanging out at the liquor store and in the back alley."
A certain late capitalist neurosis often forces us to ask "What's next? How seriously does Davis take this latest creative pursuit? Does he want to sign to a label? And what's the reasonable hip-hop ceiling of a 45-year-old ex-NBA star?" But considering that the first act of his career brought him nine-figure earnings, Davis has the luxury of only focusing on the craft and his desire for self-expression.
Oatmeal is far from the only thing on Davis' plate. He's running Business Inside the Game (BIG), an investor's summit that expanded into a membership club matching entrepreneurs to investors (the app launches next year.) There's "Schoolgirls in Watts," a documentary about the Watts Learning Center. He's starring in "Going Public," a streaming series from MarketWatch that entices viewers to invest in the featured companies. And most recently, he became the co-host of the "Draymond Green Show."
"People are trying to be a part of Hollywood; we're trying to build the new Hollywood," Davis says. "The goal is to build an ecosystem for independent artists and a community that supports music, comedy, shows and content."
Davis envisions producer camps at SLiC, where aspiring talent will compete in filmed beat battles a la Verzuz. He imagines events dedicated to acting, rapping and stand-up comedy. His long-term goals reflect the formidable drive that first propelled him into the league: a movie, TV shows, albums and an animated hip-hop Christmas musical told through the eyes of Black Santa. Maybe even another Bloods and Crips documentary.
"When it's all said and done, you'll drive to South Central and see a big ass statue of me right in front of my granny's house," Davis says. "And it'll be the tallest f--- monument that anyone has ever seen in South Central."
As the afternoon winds down, the conversation grows a little wistful and sentimental. At 45, Davis is still too young to think much about how he'd like to be remembered. He seems satisfied with his achievements but incapable of stasis. The Oatmeal project seems to be a tool to unlock something deeper about his identity, something that still might be in Chrysalis. What exactly it is and what will emerge remains unclear. What's most important for him right now is that he's on the path -- at least until the next left turn.
"I love discovering my better self and unpacking things that I may not have understood before," Davis says, flashing that high-beam smile. "I'm always trying to reach higher levels of cultural awareness and self-awareness.
"Once I figure out who Baron Davis is, that'll be the end of the journey."
