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Having
appeared alongside Pete Rock, Little Brother and
playing the Justus League's "hook man,"
role, Darien Brockington is ready to step out on his
own...
ThaFormula.Com
- You're a North Carolina resident where you connected
with the Justus League crew, how did that come about?
Darien
Brockington - I went to school with Phonte and Pooh.
We had a couple of classes together and were cordial
but we never really were close for long time, they
were just two guys that were in my class. It's funny
how you never know you'll cross paths in the future.
My first introduction to them as Little Brother was
when they opened for Yahzarah a long, long time ago. I
was singing background for Yahzarah at the time. I had
known them as classmates, but I didn't know they were
artists until that point. After that we were kind of
in the same circle but weren't necessarily close. I
knew they rhymed, they knew I sang, and we had some of
the same friends. It wasn't until like a year or two
after we graduated, I was working at a bank and Pooh
happened to have an account there. He walked in one
day and I'm like "yo, what's up man?" I was
excited to see him because I hadn't spoken to him
since college. Little Brother was already doing their
thing and they were about to go to Japan or something.
He asked me if I wrote and said "yeah" so he
said "cool," and he'd call me when he got
back and we'd work on a song. That song "My
Mind" happened to make his album that just came
out. He played it for the rest of the Justus League
and they loved it and that was pretty much it, I
became the "hook guy." (laughs)
ThaFormula.Com
- That was the first thing you recorded, but one of
the last things that came out? You've been on a lot of
their material before Pooh's album…
Darien
Brockington - Yeah. Then you know Phonte took a chance
on me with the Pete Rock album "Soul Survivor
II." They had already had a hook on it, and a
different track for it but for some reason they wanted
to do it over. The hook that they had didn't really
work right so Phonte called me up and asked if I could
put a different spin on it. So I took elements from
his first hook and stuff I came up with on my own and
it worked. After that I just got put onto more and
more things and before you know it we had a great
working relationship.
ThaFormula.Com
- You said that you were writing before you had hooked
up with the Justus League, had you recorded any
material yet or were you just writing?
Darien
Brockington - I had my little demos. I kind of took up
writing when I was 18 or 19 and started writing for
other people as well as for myself. I don't think I
took it as seriously as I should have but I think when
I was about 21 I really started writing and recording
for myself, but I had functioning songs before I met
them, some of those songs you can actually find on my
website now (www.darienmusic.com).
ThaFormula.Com
- I was reading you're bio at your website, it said
that you started singing at 2…2? (laughs)
Darien
Brockington - I could just about sing better than I
could talk. (laughs)
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