It’s the last thing you’d expect to hear from your lawyer. But the Golden State Warriors’ chief legal counsel, David Kelly, sees his background as just part of a career full of creativity, music and writing. For him, it’s all related. To others, it seems like he’s succeeded in multiple, full careers in the time that most master just one.
Kelly sees a growing intersection between sports and entertainment, leveraging his background as an underground Chicago rapper to persuade Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber to create the first in-house record label at an NBA team, Golden State Entertainment (GSE). Kelly still runs the legal team for the Warriors while also leading GSE, and he just released a song with E-40.
David Kelly’s early inspiration
A dad of three and husband to an ER physician, David Kelly points to his dad as his earliest inspiration for the definition of success. His father was the first Black partner at one of the big six accounting firms. “He’s always been a model for me on how to navigate the world in a way where you get what you need from the world, get what you deserve with what you’ve earned, maintain your identity and you’re true to yourself and you’re true to your family.” Watching him do these things has been a guide for me…”
All roads led to writing
You can take the English major out of the industry, but you can’t take the writer out of the English major, it seems. Writing is the common thread that Kelly says connects all the diverse aspects of his career path.
“I always saw myself as a writer, whether it was, you know, drafting agreements or working on bonds, or writing poems or short stories. I used to be a freelance journalist for magazines. Everything with me relates to writing,” he says. In fifth grade, his parents even put him in a creative writing course, with other kids, working on writing poems. “I really like the challenge of looking at a blank sheet of paper, and the only thing that’s going to be on that sheet of paper is what comes out of your head. And if you can’t come up with something creative to put on there, it just won’t exist, but when you do, it’s yours.”
Becoming the rapper Capital D
Poetry gave way to hip-hop music. He and his friend Tony Fields launched a company called All Natural Inc. It was an independent hip-hop label, and they released some of their own music as a group. Kelly also released solo songs under the name Cap D and Capital D, and then they released records by a number of artists that they signed as well.
“And we did fairly well for an independent record label. We toured throughout the Midwest. We made it out to England, Portugal and Brazil. It was a fun run. I always actually think about the fact that there’s a through line for me, and that through line is writing.”
Establishing a sports and music collaboration
What happens when you are both a hip-hop artist and a lawyer? You meld the two and create a new role, and an entire new organization. Golden State Entertainment is a media company David Kelly created based on the concept that the Golden State Warriors are much more than a basketball team, and he launched his vision for melding the two in 2022.
They’ve created music such as “Feel the Need,” a song played during the Warriors games, pointing to the first type of collaboration like this, in that it creates content, not just film.
“We have a vision at GSE that we will create content that really speaks to the community in a way that’s authentic,” Kelly says. “There are various events we celebrate as Warriors and as the NBA, Filipino Heritage Night, Black History Month, MLK Day, Women’s Empowerment Month and the project we did with RhymeFest this year… to me encapsulates what we are really trying to do with GSE.” He shares that RhymeFest pulled from a famous conversation between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni, creating a new project to continue that conversation with current younger female hip-hop artists. “It created a project that takes James and Nikki and keeps them current, and puts them in a current content of hip-hop. It’s a celebration of culture, and for us as the Warriors, it’s tied into our larger Black History Month celebration.”
Making a lasting impact
David Kelly made the transition from rapping as Capital D to law school, now representing the Golden State Warriors.
“It’s funny as a lawyer, I would compare it more to being like a producer in music, especially hip-hop music. In hip-hop music, you’re oftentimes working from existing records in your sampling, and you’re pulling bits and pieces from various different records that exist to create something new, to make it work,” he says. He compares it to attorney work as he pulls from precedent documents and other resources to create something as well.
But his main goal is to ensure his attorney work is more than “just transactional.” One of his proudest moments is working with the team to build Chase Center, where the Warriors play.
“It’s important that the community still feels in touch with the team, both the players and the organization, and that the organization is still very much part of the community. Whatever decisions we’re making as a company, making sure that we execute those decisions in a way that has a positive impact on the community and our fans.”
Photo by Noah Graham courtesy of David Kelly
