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By John Roth
The last thing Andre Buckner needed was a computer crash.
He'd come home from a late basketball practice session and had another one on tap the next morning. He had a test to face after that practice and a paper due a couple of days later.
But none of that crashed his PC. What he was working on when the circuitry went haywire were some documents for GMA Entertainment, a family business for which he is the president.
"I lost a lot of information, so I had to go back and redo the whole thing," he lamented several days after the crisis passed. "It was a good learning experience. I stuck with it and didn't give up."
You know Andre Buckner as the 5-foot-10 guard Duke plucked out of Hopkinsville, Ky., back in the spring of 1999 when Will Avery decided to leave school two years early for the pros. If you've been paying close attention, you may have heard that he served as the leader of Duke's "Blue Team" in practice the last couple of seasons.
You probably realize he's now a senior and assume (correctly) that he's on track to graduate following the 2003 season.
But there is another whole side to the story of Andre Buckner, career Blue Devil reserve . In another medium, it's a story that would best beset to music, for in many ways music makes Andre's world go 'round. Writing it, recording it, producing it.
But not yet selling it. He may be president of an entertainment company, but there is no paycheck coming in, nor is he promoting or marketing any products. The NCAA likely would frown on either of those endeavors involving a student-athlete. What he's doing now is setting the stage for what he hopes will be the launching pad of his post-Duke career - while also learning the practical applications for some of the topics covered under the Markets and Management certificate he'll earn with his Sociology degree next May.
Music has been one of Buckner's hobbies for many years. Here members making up songs when he was nine years old and recording them on a jam box with his two brothers. They'd play the tapes for their mother, Juanita, or for friends who came over to visit. "It was just a fun thing when we were bored," he recalls. "It was mostly original stuff, or we'd take an instrumental from someone else's song and throw our voices on it and see how it turned out."
As he got older, he took a more serious approach to writing songs. He has every genre of music in his CD collection, with rhythm and blues and hip-hop discs getting the most play. When he writes, most of his lyrics are about love. "I feel real strongly about women and usually let my emotions carry over to the paper," he notes.
Buckner's interest in music as more than a hobby intensified when he reached Duke. Noticing the cultural diversity around him and realizing he had four years to make the most of the collegiate incubator, it be gan to dawn on him that it might be possible to make a career, or at least start one, in the entertainment industry.
It is not unusual to find Buckner at the keyboard in his room working on songs until 3:00 in the morning - before tackling his homework and papers. The summer following his freshman year, he put together his first CD of original work, all hip-hop and R&B. He laid down all the tracks and did the mixing himself out of a small room at home in Hopkinsville and called it Drekspearean Art, playing on one of his aliases, Drekspeare. "At the time I didn't have singers to sing the music I wrote, so I did it all myself and it turned out pretty good," he says. Last summer he finished up a second CD, a compilation album, under his other alias, Drizzle.
While Buckner writes, records and produces, one thing he hasn't done much of is perform his work before live audiences. Unlike most aspiring collegiate musicians, he hasn't tried to line up a single gig, again in deference to potential NCAA ramifications. The closest he's come to getting on stage was at a campus fraternity fashion show, when he lip-synced to a tune on his CD while a couple of guys danced to the beat. "I was nervous, but I got through it," he says.
Buckner's family business was formed by Andre and his two older brothers, Greg and Mauryio, hence the GMA appellation. Greg, a former Clemson basketball star (1995-98), recently signed a lucrative six-year contract with the Philadelphia 76ers. He is GMA's CEO and provides the financial stability. Mauryio lives in Hopkinsville and is the head producer there.
Andre says one of the company's initial ventures will be to get a record label up and running. The first project will be a CD to come out next year called Bucking The Trend, featuring singers and hip-hop performers in the Hopkinsville area.
Buckner wrote many of the songs that will appear on the CD, or helped rewrite some of the lyrics on rap songs deemed too vulgar or violent . But don't take that to me an that he's into limiting the artistic expression of the performers. "We're giving the artists freedom. They have their own songs and I'm turning them loose. They're writing and producing. We're doing a lot of songs, then we'll pick the best 10 or 12 for the CD."
The artists involved include a couple of high schoolers, two female groups and some other young adults who have to squeeze their music around fulltime jobs. The one thing they all have in common is their hometown, Hopkinsville, located in the western part of Kentucky.
Buckner is passionate about the idea that GMA Entertainment will attempt to uplift an area that he says is considered socially and economically behind the times.
"There's a lot of talent in that town, there sources are just not available," he says. "We're trying to change that. We're trying to take care of these artists and get them out there and hopefully they can have a successful career as the three of us have."
Buckner's mother Juanita, who raised all three boys as a single parent on a licensed practical nurse's salary, will be very involved in the organizational end of the company and will handle promotional parties and other functions when the record label gets moving. A year from now, Andre says she'll also be busy building the company's youth foundation - another part of that mission to help improve their hometown.
"We'd like to build a couple of gyms and playgrounds," Andre says. "And not just build gyms, but have organizations around them where we can get the kids to come and have functions, not just a gym that's sitting there. We want to be proactive and reach out to kids."
Buckner does have some gym work of his own to tend to this winter. Coming into his final Duke season, he had played a total of 223 minutes in 65 games and scored 43 points his first three years. He does not figure to play much during games this year, and freshman Sean Dockery has taken over some of Buckner's past duties with the Blue Team as one of the first phases in his leadership development process. But Buckner still remains an invaluable member of the program.
"He's a senior. He's what we need him to be," says captain Chris Duhon. "He's in charge of our bench. When you look at our bench you're going to see guys who are excited and into the game, and it's because of him. His character, his personality is something that is needed in everyone's locker room. It wouldn't be the same if we didn't have Andre in there.
"He's as important to the team as me or anybody else. He's done a great job of keeping everybody excited and letting us know when we're playing well and when we're not."
"A lot of my leadership is undetected," Buckner explains. "You won't see me getting in someone's face on the court. I'm more likely to go to a guy behind closed doors and talk to him or encourage him when he's down or pick his spirits up. I'm pretty good at making people laugh. I just want to keep people focused on life and all that other stuff will come."
One thing Buckner does not plan to do is play on his stature as a Duke basketball player to help him attract artists, make deals or sell CDs. "I think that would take away from it, like I was just another basketball player trying to rap. That's not the case. I think I'm talented at this, basketball player or not." So no, he is not trying to emulate Shaq O'Neal, Allen Iverson or any other NBA "rappers," or even a multifaceted artist such as Will Smith, whom he admires. "The only role models in my life are my two brothers and my mother. I've never really tried to follow in anyone's footsteps but those three people," he says.
"A really important thing that's fortunate for me is that I was born into a family that would contain a millionaire . We're really close as a family, and Greg's realized our potential and is willing to invest in us. That's part of what opened my eyes to all of this - having financial backing and the capital to make moves like this."
Even if things do get a little hectic with phone calls, pages and the occasional computer crashes while he tries to balance sports, classes and the beginnings of a future career. It's a juggling act he's glad to have gone through at Duke.
"It's been a great thing for me," he says. "I thank everyone who was involved in the project to bring me here . I'm highly grateful. I've met a lot of people, met lifetime friends. It's been really good."
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