kel spencers brother

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Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2005

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/...ts/12544940.htm

A column by Pete DiPrimio

He’s rappin’ and returnin’

Bennett writes rap songs and returns kicks

BLOOMINGTON — Indiana’s Lance Bennett has a pen that won’t run dry, a mouth that won’t stop. There are rap mountains to climb and they are not scaled by writer’s block and silence.

“I could always talk,” the junior receiver says. “I’ve always loved to write.”

Bennett already has co-written two hit songs with actor-singer Will Smith — “Nod Ya Heads (Black Suits Comin’)” and “Switch.” He’s written another song, “Knock Knock,” about IU’s hoped-for football renaissance. School officials have put it to a football highlight video with Bennett singing. If the Hoosiers confuse themselves with, say, Michigan and go 9-2 this season, state retailers couldn’t stock enough copies.

“If the marketing department wants to do something with it,” Bennett says, “we could get that done.”

Bennett seems on the verge of a financial windfall, although nothing is sure but his right shoulder’s snarling wolf-lion tattoo.

“I’m not in the situation where I don’t have to work again,” he says. “I’m trying to put myself in that situation in the next couple of years.”

“Switch” came out this year and went platinum. More than 500,000 copies were sold in the United States, more worldwide, and the buying frenzy hasn’t stopped.

Because of music contract procedures, Bennett won’t start seeing money for another nine months.

“I can’t wait for the residuals to come in,” he says.

Who says silence is golden?

♦♦♦

Bennett eyes football opportunity without regard for size. He is 5-6 and 165 pounds and he ranks just behind Ohio State sensation Ted Ginn as the Big Ten’s most dangerous kick returner.

Last season, Bennett returned a kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown and a punt 94 yards for a touchdown. He ranked fourth nationally with a 30.0-yard kickoff average, averaged 10.2 yards in punt returns and did it all with a bum knee.

“Last season, I was running around on one leg,” he says.

In a 10-month period, Bennett had surgeries on both knees to fix a pair of ruptured patella tendons.

He’s recovered well enough to make the wide receiver rotation and avoid the returner-only label.

“I’m an offensive player first,” he says. “I also return punts and kickoffs. I don’t want to put a stamp on myself. As long as I have the ball in my hands, I want to make something happen.”

Sore knees limited Bennett’s preseason happenings, but he insists he’s ready for game impact.

“I’m better than last season. I’m ready to make plays.”

Coach Terry Hoeppner is ready to see them.

“We’ve seen what he can do as a kick returner. He can bring that same excitement as a receiver.”

Size, it seems, really doesn’t matter.

♦♦♦

Bennett started writing rap songs when he was 8. He performed for talent shows. He never shut up.

“I always had a way with words, even if I had a slick mouth,” he says. “Rappin’ is just putting that to rhyme.”

Bennett rhymed well enough to spark Will Smith’s interest after older brother Lennie’s chance meeting several years ago with a relative of Smith’s executive producer.

Lennie wound up writing a song for Smith’s “Wild Wild West” CD and mentioned his rap-writing younger brother. At the time, Lance was a high school junior at Brooklyn Poly Prep in New York who wrote for the love of it. He still does.

“I might go back to my room tonight and write. I like saying what people like hearing.”

Expect IU fans to like hearing “Knock Knock.” It isn’t a love song, but it’s not gangsta rap, either. For example:

“Knock, knock we at your door, baby. Crimson and cream, we ready for war, baby. Let us in when we in that town. For we huffin’, puffin’, blow the house down.”

OK, so it’s not “Indiana-we’re-all-for-you” politically correct, which is why it makes some IU marketing people jittery. Still, Hoeppner likes it. He’s hip in a Father-Knows-50-Cent kind of way. He’s a Will Smith fan. He has Smith’s “Switch” CD in his SUV.

“I’ve seen the video,” Hoeppner says. “It’s a great song.”

If “Knock Knock” becomes a hit, Hoeppner wants some action.

“It’s going to be a hit and I’m claiming 50 percent rights,” he says with his usual reach-for-the-stars optimism. “I’m the promoter.”

Actually, he’s not, but since he controls Bennett’s playing time, nobody argues.

Bennett drops names throughout the song, mostly teammates such as Kyle Killion, John Pannozzo, Yamar Washington and Chris Taylor. Hoeppner is mentioned, of course. Bennett is no fool. But that’s as far as it goes.

“In the video, Coach Hep doesn’t sing and he doesn’t dance,” Bennett says.

What if it becomes a hit?

“There’s no chance of me singing,” Hoeppner says.

This chance, it seems, belongs all to Bennett.