My brief encounter with Darnell Swallow

When I was invited to go along and review a party that Darnell Swallow from Big Brother was having, my honest first reaction out loud was, “Oh, ok sounds great!” In my mind on the other hand I couldn’t help but think, “what exactly does he have to be celebrating?”. Admittedly I wasn’t overwhelmed with excitement, but instead I was slightly confused as to what exactly Darnell was celebrating. Had he released a song I was unaware of? Who would be at this party? Still unsure, I decided to go along in a bid to get all of my questions answered and have a good night.

“Thursday 18th December – Swish Promotions hosts a very exclusive VIP Xmas party”. At least this is what the Vendome Bar & Lounge flyer claimed was in store for me and the other fifty odd guests that were present at the venue. Exclusive VIP? Considering I (and by the looks of things more than half of the other guests) had just walked straight through the doors unquestioned I was already struggling to believe this statement, but given that my best friend and I had just journeyed all the way to Knightsbridge to attend the event, the universal decision was to stay and hope that Swish Promotions would in the very least host an Xmas party.

The venue was nice, different in a dancer unfriendly kind of way, but nice. Although the event had been marketed to me as a party, everyone present (expect of course, that one person that makes every musical event complete by dancing in a special way in some open space) was seated and wholly consumed in conversations with their friends. I found myself questioning whether or not the people present were aware of what the night was in aid of, or if they had just strolled down to their local SW9 bar for a few pricey pre-Christmas drinks? Quite probable.

The night moved on, slowly, but it moved on and the DJs had rotated and were playing a pretty good selection of RnB hits, but still only a handful of people had joined the special dancer on the “dancefloor”. Scared off by the bottle of Belvedere that adorned the DJs booth, my friend and I had not yet made it to the bar and so she urged me to talk to Darnell and get a quote to spice up my review so that we could swiftly turn in for the night. This was a great idea, and judging by his recent actions in the bar, it was only a matter of time before Darnell left his mini VIP area and wandered through the bar to say hello to those that crossed his path before heading over to the bar to gather some drinks for his friends and himself. One trip, two trip, three trip, four, it soon became pretty apparent to me that it wasn’t going to be that easy for me to talk to Darnell unless I interjected one of his conversations.

And so, becoming evermore tired of the atmosphere-free party and the disconcerted look on my friend’s face I walked over to the bar, apologised for interrupting and introduced myself to Darnell as ‘Susanne Singh, a writer’ to which he didn’t seem too impressed and so I added ‘and a friend of UK Comedian Kojo’ to which he hugged me and offered to get me a drink on his limitless tab. One day my name and occupation will be enough. One day. Politely declining his offer I explained that I would like a quote from him about what we could expect from him in the New Year (maybe this would explain why he was throwing a party?).

“So Darnell, what can we expect from you in 2009?” I asked.

To which the gist of the ten minute answer Darnell Swallow gave was, “Well the main thing you can expect from me next year is an album. Whilst I was in the Big Brother House, my main thing was ‘Don’t label me, respect me’ and so when I come out with my album I want it to gain major respect. Ok, so I went on Big Brother. So what? I didn’t go to intentionally audition, I went to keep my friend company and I was chosen. I know a lot of people probably think that I got it easy because I get media coverage because I was in the House, but that’s not what I want. I’m struggling because what I really want is respect from my community, from the UK urban community, and a lot of them give me a real hard time because they’re under the impression that the only people that enter the Big Brother House are ‘wannabe celebrities’. This might be true but all I can say is when I was in there I was real and I didn’t expect that I would get chosen to enter the house.
I’m really serious about my music and that’s why I’m taking so much time on my album. I want to be the Nate Dogg of the UK and be respected like UK artists like Bashy and N Dubz, I mean at the end of the day I’m British. Yes I have an American accent but my parents are British and I was born over here and I only picked up the American accent because I was sent to study in America.
But anyways, definitely expect an album from me in the summer of ‘09’ and I should be working with a lot of big names.”

Still completely oblivious as to why Darnell was having a party, all in all, Darnell seemed like a really nice, genuine guy, I managed to get a good quote from him and oh, his choice in shirt wasn’t bad either.