"It became something like Indiana Jones and you have to go back and solve the mystery. So I decided to document it to help anybody out who wants to find out their identity," McDaniels says.
After four months he finally got the answer he had been looking for.
Her name, Berncenia Lovelace of nearby Staten Island, a single mother whose parents had made her give him up.
After a nervous call to his birth mother, McDaniels came away uplifted.
He set up a meeting for the following Saturday and after a week that seemed as long as the 41 years they were apart, mother and child were reunited.
"I was happy. I was happy and feeling a lot of love energy from him. It was great, really, really great," Lovelace says.
McDaniels had gained a mother, a sister and two brothers and found out he was not Dominican. But most important, he learned he had the support of his adoptive mom.
Although his journey was complete, McDaniels' his mission was just beginning. He went on to sponsor a camp for orphaned and adopted children and went back to the studio to make music, returning to a familiar source of inspiration.