Review Fix Exclusive: Darrell Kelley Talks ‘The Coronavirus’ And More

Review Fix chats with singer/songwriter Darrell Kelley, who discusses his new track, “The Coronviris” and more.

Review Fix: How did you get involved in music? 

Darrell Kelley: I cultivated my musical talents with the inspiration and encouragement of my uncle William Baskin (whom I fondly call “Uncle Billy”), a performer, choreographer and artist manager, aunt Donna DeRosa and mother Sandra Kelley. From the age of nine, I remember that my brother and I were always in the groups my uncle put together. My uncle taught us and our friends how to sing and perform. He used to make squares out of soap for me because I was out of step and couldn’t stay in the circle he taught us to move in. As I got older, he was my inspiration because of his success as a manager of so many groups in Boston, including The Fourth Amendment, which later evolved into Planet Patrol. These days, he still sings and plays organ at church. When Michael Jackson and Prince were huge in the 80s, my family knew I could perform just like MJ and asked me to sing “Billie Jean” at family get togethers. I entered all sorts of singing competitions at Roscoe’s when I was 18 and 19 years old, performing in four different colored tuxedos, and won first and second place many times. One competition was hosted by Maurice Starr, who put New Edition and New Kids on the Block together. I think I would have won that competition but I lost because I made a joke about Maurice’s brother, who was a judge, having a rented tux while I owned mine! 

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Kelley: Randomly and quite frequently on the spot, when I think of a song, I write it. I love writing about every day life, from personal relationships to contemporary social issues that affect us all. If I see something in the news that I agree or disagree with, let’s say, I will write the lyrics and melody and then call the producers and studios I work with and lay everything down. I have the exclusive rights to my music via Viral Records, LLC, and they are for hire. I give them what I have written and tell them I need to create a groove with certain beats. I help organize it, I bring them my vision and the engineers I work with help me execute it. We trade tracks back and forth and I send them a final file and they go ahead and master it. Inspiration-wise, it’s primarily about everyday life. Sometimes, the initial inspiration can be quirky and unexpected. In an article someone wrote on me, the journalist said that I write songs faster than you can watch a movie and it wouldn’t surprise him if I would write a song called ‘Here Ends the Lesson.’ I read the article and the next day I had a song with that title done – and it became the title track of one of my albums last year! I can write a song in a minute to an hour. Every time I go into the studio, the process gets better and easier. It takes one to 20 minutes to get a track done, chopped up and engineered. Now I’m to the point when I go into the studio, I go over it a few times to make sure it’s done right.   

Review Fix: What inspires you?

Kelley: Simple. People, family and everyday life. Sometimes, like I said, it’s an important issue related to an event in the news, such as when I wrote “Believe in Something (Kneel) about (former 49ers quarterback) Colin Kaepernick and his decision to take a knee during the National Anthem. When he was attacked by everyone, I felt like he had the freedom of speech to express his opinion that way. It became one of my most popular songs. Or “Unity,” which is about police brutality and that protest in Charlottesville where someone ran over and killed a protester. These songs are based on important events and issues in our country. Often, I will simply hear a sound, like it and freestyle to it, singing just what I feel in the moment. My song “Mood” is an example. When I started freestyling it, I had no idea it would turn out like it did. Same with “Moonlight” and the Carribean styled “Beautiful,” about how I felt about the woman in my life and how I feel love is supposed to be. 

Review Fix: What does music mean to you?

Kelley: Love, unity, acceptance and living. I believe especially in the power of love, which inspired me to create my grass roots UWGEAM ministry. In the world today, you have to have love and for me, music is a reflection of that. For those who are religious, they can’t talk about Jesus if they don’t know the meaning of love. When I talk about Unity in my songs and elsewhere, it’s about a world where color and cultural differences don’t matter. I truly feel we need to come together as a country. In my view, when we talk about acceptance, you can be gay, confused, or a person who smokes weed. As long as it’s not illegal or wrong in God’s eyes…because only God judges. I think we should accept people regardless of their faults. Our acceptance should extend to our passion for all kinds of music. If you can dance to a song and listen over and over, you shouldn’t care if the artist is black or white, or what country that artist comes from. There are a lot of haters in this world, and music is one way of combating that and bringing people together. 

Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?

Kelley: Unique! I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t feel it was awesome! To be honest, I don’t listen to my own music every day or analyze it too closely as far as style and genre. I just know I love doing it and consider myself just an average person doing average things. I’m still the same guy I was before I started making music professionally. As far as influences, I draw from a lot of places, including R&B, gospel, hip hop and African and Caribbean sounds. I hear all kinds of music and just enjoy it and those vibes are definitely part of it. I like to say I write music and don’t really care what anyone calls it as long as they listen, love it and appreciate my message. 

Review Fix: How are you live shows different from your studio work?

Kelley: Whether I’m making music live or in the studio, everything is driven by the fact that I love people. I just go out and enjoy myself. If I’m doing a video shoot, am onstage or in the studio, I’m the same person. I’m serious about my music, but I also love having fun, laughing and cracking jokes. I don’t pay attention to my surroundings most of the time. Anywhere I go, I’m basically all about communicating and interacting with people. I smile at everyone I meet and ask how are you. Just as I love connecting with people when I’m performing, I am personally invested in everyone I encounter in real life. Recently when I was at KFC, I saw a family with four kids and I gave the mother a donation because I remember how it was growing up with a mom struggling to support eight children. I always want to make a difference, and take that sensibility to the stage. When I’m up there, I always remind myself that nobody who is playing with me and no audience member is different from me. I just want to uplift people. 

Review Fix: What inspired your latest single “The Coronavirus”? What is your sense of the impact that it’s having?

Kelley: I felt angry about all the misinformation the government was disseminating, and I thought, what the hell, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna write a song about it. I’m all about taking every negative thing and making something positive out of it. I didn’t have a goal in mind. I just wrote the lyrics and basic melody, teamed with my producer/collaborator with his independent label Viral Records, LLC, and laid it down. I’m just saying and singing what’s real. I start out saying, “You know the coronavirus is spreading everywhere and we have to slow down the spread/So stay inside and don’t go out unless you have to – but let’s keep our senior citizens safe.” 

Then, it’s almost stream of consciousness or like me having a conversation with loved ones, covering all the major concerns: “I’m scared right now because doctors don’t have the proper protection/If we don’t stop it, we are heading straight for another bad recession/How we gonna stop the spread if we can’t follow simple directions?” As it continues, I address the brutal reality of people dying, the importance of staying safe and of course the fact that we have to wash our hands, not touch our face and avoid large crowds. I created the music video to further drive the points home with visuals relating to the science of the illness, how society is reacting to it and living in this new reality.  

I wake up every day to the latest news about the virus. and I realize that many people are not listening to the authorities and doing what we’re supposed to do to stop the spread of the coronavirus. I wrote the song as a response to that, hoping people will listen to its message and the reality will sink in that this is life and death serious. It’s my way of sharing the reality that this is not something you can play around with, and that we all have to stick together and wait it out until we flatten the curve and find an ultimate solution. We all have to pay attention and focus on human lives so that we can beat this. It is my belief that we should help people not just in the U.S. but around the world. World leaders need to work together to stop the terrible spread.

It’s especially important to get the attention of young people. They’re out there still learning about life and it’s up to us to continually educate them on how serious this is. They need to know this isn’t something that’s just on TV, but possibly in their own backyard. Sometimes music, having a good beat and a catchy chorus, I the most effective way to reach them.

While the song is charting well, a lot of people appreciate the message and I’ve received many positive reviews, I’ve also encountered naysayers who tell me it’s wrong or self-serving to write a song about a pandemic. I tell them, I don’t see how you’re helping anyone using your creativity to help spread awareness and inform people. Particularly in the African American community, I don’t see anyone else truly standing up to write something that can possibly impact young people for the better. 

Though the song is for everyone, I want to be the newscaster for people in my community who don’t have a voice. I’m concerned about innocent people who aren’t informed because they don’t pay attention to what’s online or on cable TV – or they’re getting wrong information. I have a heart for them and their well-being because I grew up in the projects and know how helpless they might feel if they are to contract the virus and feel like they have no place to turn for help, medically and otherwise. Also, with schools being closed, they don’t have the lunch program and after school recreation, which is the only opportunity some kids have to eat properly interact with others.  

I am hoping “The Coronavirus” continues to give me a platform to help people and offer my views on related situations. I think everyone in America should have a mask to wear, and gloves if necessary, and if they can’t afford them, the government should be able to provide them. As a small business owner, I was dismayed that because I learned too late about how and where to apply for federal government relief, the funds were already gone. They should have helped based on who paid their taxes and made it easier. It’s so unfair because so many are suffering because of the shutdown. On another note, I have harsh words for those self-serving protestors in various cities who are endangering themselves and anyone they come in contact with just to make their point. If you open the economy up too quickly and return to business as usual before all the safeguards are in place, you will potentially kill many more people. How can you get a paycheck when you’re dead? It makes no sense.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2020?

Kelley: I was asked this a few months, ago, and my response at the time was to “start performing at festivals and concerts, get onstage, have fun and share the love. I think I’ve been hiding myself in the studio too long. I will go wherever I am welcomed.” Now of course, those plans are on hold as we see how the pandemic plays out, but that will never be an excuse to not continue to be creative and share important messages through music. I’m currently working on an album which will include my last few singles and will include more hard-hitting songs that will help you understand what’s going on in our political world – along the lines of my previous songs like “Evil” (about the Charlottesville protests) and “Believe in Something (Kneel)” about Colin Kaepernick. I am also currently looking for new independent artists to mentor and sign to my label Viral Records, LLC.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Kelley: My son Kevin is a multi-talented musician and producer as well, and we are about to release our first studio collaboration, the fresh, soulful and romantic new track “Love and Need You.” Being in lockdown freed up his time to focus on creating new music, and I freestyled over the basic tracks he sent me. Kevin is the track’s co-producer, engineer and sound designer. We recorded it at Bay 8 Studio in North Miami Beach with my longtime go-to engineer Ice – sticking to social distancing protocol, of course. This song will be on the album as well.

Review Fix: Anything else you would like to add?

Kelley: Helping people is something I’ve been doing my whole life, even before I was making music professionally. If you search for an old YouTube video, you can see I organized an event where I helped over 1,500 homeless people, many who were sleeping under a bridge, freezing at night. I was able to help many of them get jobs and places to live. That’s just one example of my commitment to serving my immediate community and beyond. Music started out as a hobby for me, and once it became clear that my passion was giving me professional platform, I started writing positive music – some playful and fun, others reflecting my social consciousness. People began responding to that. I always want to keep things positive and never brag about having this or that. Music has a higher purpose than telling everyone what you just bought. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to use my gifts to spread love unity and acceptance.