Darnell Williams Takes a Ride in “South Central” Video

Darnell Williams, a Detroit-bred, LA-based film school drop-out, introduces himself to the world with the video for "South Central." The single is off his debut project. Wearing a Fresh Prince Bel-Air Academy basketball jersey, the young MC takes a ride around town with the homies as he kicks off his rhymes. The video is visually stunning, switching between lens sporadically.

Life for Darnell has been a roller-coaster. He became a film major at Columbia College in Chicago and eventually linked up with Illroots creator Mike Waxx and Mike Carson. The trio would work together and put out some great content. However, Darnell will later part ways with Waxx and Carson. After the breakup, the young MC would find himself in hard times, going from a Hollywood home with a swimming pool to being temporarily homeless and eventually crashing on a friend’s kitchen floor in South Central. Now Darnell Williams is ready for the spotlight. Read an excerpt from Darnell's interview with Pigeons and Planes below:

What was the creative process of making “South Central”?
To be honest, I hate to keep talking about my past and Illroots, but I was working with them. We eventually got into disagreements over ownership, and Waxx was my roommate at the time, we had an apartment together in Los Angeles. I went to visit my family and came back to LA and the locks were changed. The locks in the office too. I was pretty much pushed out of the company.

From there, I was just crashing around, couch-hopping, and my homie from Detroit happened to be moving out here for school. I thought he was living in Mid-City, but I found out it was South Central so I started crashing on his kitchen floor and kinda made it my room. From there, I was still going back and forth to Hollywood trying to get my connects back up and stuff.

A lot of people stop fucking with you once you aren’t attached to a brand. You start to see who was really fucking with you, and who was fucking with you for the opportunity. It was frustrating because I didn’t come to LA to move and fucking live in the hood again. It was like I was in Detroit again, just a different scene.

Before I was living in North Hollywood, had a swimming pool on my roof, all kinds of shit. To go from that to my homie’s kitchen floor changed my whole mentality. It changed how I looked at things. When I came to LA I saw the best side all of the time because I was in the industry making moves. Then when I came out of that and came to the real life of LA, it just inspired me. I ain’t gangbanging or none of that shit but at the end of the day, I’m still dealing with the same shit as everyone else living there every day.

It was just the whole experience man, the shit I was seeing just came out in a song. It’s crazy because I didn’t know how I was going to get respect in music and be working for a blog at the same time, but all of that shit fell apart and put me into a place that gave me “South Central.”

20 Albums Turning 10 in 2016