SANTA MONICA, Calif. — About 30 minutes into Darren Waller’s recording session, a music producer asked him to make a small tweak.
Waller, the Pro Bowl tight end for whom the Giants traded in March, was stationed inside Interscope Records’s sprawling headquarters trying to finalize two songs he’d created. He had just two hours to do so before his flight to Las Vegas, where his new wife, Kelsey Plum, waited.
With Waller’s song “Step” blaring, he leaned into the mic and let out a “skrrt” — an elongated ad-lib that a local talent manager asked him to shorten and sharpen. Within two minutes, Waller had nailed the fix, and the four music professionals in the room smiled and nodded to the rhythm of the beat that Waller had produced.
The Pro Bowler is a great-grandson of Thomas Waller, the swing pianist and composer known as Fats, and his own music — mostly hip-hop, with a mixture of songs that he raps, produces and writes — has lately become more than just an escape from the football field.
He had released four albums, recording at home with just a computer, microphone and speakers before sending tracks off to an engineer in Georgia. But in March, just one week after the Raiders traded him, Waller and 21 other N.F.L. players attended a league-sponsored program to…
