In the third episode of Race: Bubba Wallace, filmmakers show another side of Wallace, the only Black man to win a race at the highest level of NASCAR since 1963. During a stretch of his 2021 season with 23XI Racing, Wallace unwinds at home in his basement by playing drums and singing along to Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Goin Down.” “Much respect to all the drummers and musicians in bands because [performing in front of a crowd] is way more nerve-racking than my first Daytona 500,” he says in the docuseries, smiling ear to ear behind the kit. “When you’re in front of a crowd, you’re the tempo. When you mess up, everyone notices. In driving, we’re going so fast people can’t see it... That’s why we get 400 laps because we can mess up 399 of them.” 

While it might feel shocking to see a NASCAR driver play the drums (and play them well), music has long been an essential part of Wallace’s life. If you’ve followed his career, you know how important his fierce love for music has been for him. Whether it’s his personal Beats by Dre sponsorship or the many tweets about hardcore bands like August Burns Red, Erra and Parkway Drive, it’s impossible to separate his on-track efforts from his off-track passions. “When the races were bad, you just put on your music on the flight home, mellow out and think, ‘All right, today’s a new day,’” Wallace tells Tudum. “It’s always important for me just to manage the expectations on the track, and music could help that.” 

Wallace first began racing at age 9, driving in the Bandoleros and Legends series, and two years later he picked up the drums after his father bought him a Roland electronic kit. “I was in a middle school band,” Wallace says. “This wasn’t the marching band or anything. This was the one where you stand and put your arm on the bass drum and you have your own snare drum and stuff.” He refers to drumming initially as “a hobby that I would spend a few months on then take a couple years off,” but he got more involved once he was introduced to the world of heavy music. “It was seventh grade and I had seen, on MySpace back then, Avenged Sevenfold’s ‘Unholy Confessions,’” he says. “I was just starting to get into drumming, and the breakdown to that song was super sick. For years, I was just always focused on the drums in those kinds of songs.” 

Though Wallace was initially drawn to the frenetic pace of the drum breakdowns in these songs, he later considered the lyrics to be just as important. As one of the most prominent athletes in sports to publicly discuss mental health, he tweeted in 2019 about music counteracting the depression he sometimes experiences. “I love my heavy metal screamo RAWR stuff,” he wrote. “Some of the best messaging has come from my type of music. I could go on [and] on. Moral of the story is... find something you love that nobody can take from you. Indulge yourself, let it take you away!”

Wallace has found solace and comfort in these heavy songs. “I’m into the metalcore side of things, so you don’t really understand the lyrics right away,” Wallace says, noting that the singers are usually screaming the words. But as he would read the lyrics and imagine being in the singer’s shoes, songs about navigating mental health, feeling isolated and being yourself became even more relatable. “You can pinpoint certain things that happen in your life that a song takes you back to or helps you get through some dark moments,” he says. “It’s not just turning on the radio and being like, ‘Oh yeah, everything’s fine.’ You have to find that right song for that right day in the right moment to make everything seem cohesive and make things better.” 

Wallace’s love for what he calls the “RAWR stuff” makes him somewhat of an outlier in the NASCAR garage. “I would say the majority of music taste among drivers is country music, which is fine,” Wallace says. “I like country that sounds like Tyler Childers but I don’t really see him as a country artist. For me, country is like the pop country or the bro country stuff. Sitting there with a beer in hand. I’m not really for that.” Though Wallace is the only driver with an August Burns Red song as his intro tune at races, some of his competitors love heavy music too. Tyler Reddick chose a song by Wallace’s favorite band Parkway Drive as his intro track, Alex Bowman is good friends with Underoath singer Aaron Gillespie, and Wallace’s best friend and fellow driver Ryan Blaney would scream while Wallace whaled on the drums in basement jam sessions. 

While metalcore and hardcore are Wallace’s true musical obsessions, he’s also into hip-hop. In 2021, he even co-starred in the video for Post Malone’s “Motley Crew,” which also featured his 23XI team owner Denny Hamlin. “NASCAR had come to us and was like, ‘Hey, you guys want to be a part of the Post Malone video?’ And I was like, ‘Hell yeah. That’s super cool,’” Wallace says. “It was a really laid-back environment on set. The fun scene was the party scene at the end and having a ton of artists there. It was cool in that environment with those people just to create those relationships and to enjoy music, which is what we all share.” 

If you want to dive further into Wallace’s music taste, he has three bands everyone should check out. “I would definitely start with Silent Planet. Those guys are super relatable,” he says. “Parkway Drive is my number one. And then I’d probably recommend Fire from the Gods.” 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.