One song can change everything, and after the release of his platinum debut single “Panda,” 19-year-old Sidney Royel Selby III went from a local Brooklyn hook-man to a breakout rap star with a platinum, No. 1 Billboard single and a record deal with Kanye West.
“In the hood, I was the man you came to for the music if you wanted me to spice shit up,” Designer says. “Everybody came to me.”
While growing up in Louis Armstrong Housing project in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn, Desiigner was exposed to all types of music. His parents put him on to old school R&B, while his sister exposed him to reggae. It didn’t take long before young Desiigner started to develop his own tastes and find his unique voice.
“I was always a music fan as a kid. As soon as I came out the house, I was singing to the girls,” he says. “I was the ladies’ boy, singing happy birthday and all that. That was my thing, go to girls’ parties and sing happy birthday to them.”
It was all fun and games, but as he grew older, Desiigner found himself running with the wrong crowd, and he was shot at the age of fourteen. The youngster was in and out the hospital the same day, but the incident led him to shift his focus towards music full time. “I’m not gonna lie, I was a bad kid,” he says. “It was just wrong place, wrong time.”