When David Hood III was in the third grade at the now-closed Oceanside Charter School in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he was one of the youngest students in an educational rap group.
It allowed the school to get about a dozen children thinking positively about education, Hood said. His part of the rap started with, “My name is Lil Tre,” he said.
“Lil Tre” is now Trizzy Tre Hood. The redshirt-senior running back spends some of his time off the field rapping in his room, where he has a microphone and an Apple desktop computer with the Logic Pro X music program to help him make music. He has been uploading songs to SoundCloud for two years.
“I’ve been doing music for a very long time, and it’s just stuck with me,” Hood said. “And I’ve played football for a very long time also. It’s just football takes up more of your time, and you can be more flexible with your art, with your music.”
After he graduated with a media studies and production degree in December, Hood is taking classes as a graduate student. He said this allows him more free time than in past seasons.
He is using some of that time to write music. Hood said he writes lyrics in his phone every day, whenever he thinks of a line.
Hood’s musical influences include Lil Wayne, Lil Durk, Jay-Z and 2Pac. Hood has a Tupac Shakur quote from an interview he did with Vibe Magazine in 1996 tattooed on his right arm.
“I have no fear,” Shakur said. “I have only ambition. I want mine, and I’ll do anything to protect and feed my family.”
Hood is using part of his extra time this year to plan his future.
Plan A is a professional football career. Last year, Hood played in all 13 games, led Temple with 638 yards rushing and tied with senior Ryquell Armstead for a team-high five rushing touchdowns.
Hood could have gained more yards last year if he waited for holes to open at the line of scrimmage, running backs coach Tony Lucas Hood’s musical influences include Lil Wayne, Lil Durk, Jay-Z and 2Pac. Hood has a Tupac Shakur quote from a 1996 interview the late rapper did with Vibe Magazine tattooed on his right arm.
“I have no fear,” the tattoo reads. “I have only ambition. I want mine, and I’ll do anything to protect and feed my family.”
Hood is using his extra time this year to plan for his future.
Plan A is a professional football career. Last year, Hood played in all 13 games, led Temple with 638 yards rushing and tied senior Ryquell Armstead for first in rushing touchdowns with five.
Hood could have gained more yards last year if he waited for holes to open at the line of scrimmage, running backs coach Tony Lucas said. Hood said Lucas told him he could have gained 150 or 200 yards against Central Florida on Nov. 18 instead of 81.
“The toughest thing for this position specifically is you can have a lot of success and not do things the right way,” Lucas said. “So it’s kind of reeling him back in, letting those guys back in to understand the success wasn’t a byproduct of doing things the right way, but if you would have done it the right way, the result would have been better.”
If a professional football career doesn’t pan out, Hood’s Plan B is music. Hood used the computer program GarageBand to mix and master songs from his freshman year of high school to sophomore year of college before deciding he wanted more advanced software.
This year, he began working with Kenneth Earle, a 2012 broadcasting, telecommunications and mass media alumnus who produces music under the stage name Kenny Dinero $.
Earle said the first time they worked together in the studio, Hood freestyled over five of Earle’s beats.
“One of the key things that stands out to me about him is just the energy and the passion that he has for just doing it, for just being an artist,” Earle said.
In August 2017, Hood released his “More Time More Effort” mixtape. He is holding his 3-year-old son David Hood IV on the cover.
David Hood III goes home to South Jersey to see his son after Saturday practices. In summers, he spends whole weekends with his son.
“I think that’s one thing that’s going to stick in his brain as a child,” David Hood III’s mother, Lisa, told The Temple News in July. “Even as a little boy, he’s going to remember going to his dad’s school, going through the locker room and different things about school. So he always tries to be a great role model even in the midst of being a student as well.”
Recently, David Hood III has rapped with teammates like freshman wideout Sean Ryan and redshirt-freshman defensive lineman Malik Burns. He is working on a mixtape, but he hasn’t set a release date.
“Everything has got to be at my own pace for me to feel comfortable,” David Hood III said. “I can’t make my music with restraints on time. If it takes three hours, it takes three hours. If it takes an hour, it takes an hour. If it takes 10 minutes, it takes 10 minutes. Like, you never know. So I just need time and my own way of doing things.”
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