Darrell M. McNeill is a proud native New York Brooklynite. He works principally as a producer, musician, composer, arranger, contractor, promoter, critic, journalist, and self-described historian and ethnomusicologist. He is also the director of operations for the Black Rock Coalition (BRC), a grassroots 501c3 advocacy, promotion, and production nonprofit for artists of color who defy the music industry’s stereotypical constructs regarding Black music.

McNeill is fluent in fine arts, theater, film, and broadcast media. He’s written for syndicated television, public radio, and indie theater. He’s also written for publications such as Village Voice, VIBE, SPIN, RAVERS, Rolling Stone, and other print and online outlets. He worked for ten years as the associate producer of music programming at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). His work advocates for cultural equality, equity, and justice in/through/by the arts, with emphasis on underserved and misrepresented communities, especially the African Diaspora.
As an author, McNeill’s first work is a 33 1/3 series book about the album The Isley Brothers: 3+3. He is independently researching his second book about Black rock artists navigating institutional racism in the music industry from the early 1970s through the mid-90s.

In 2019, he produced History of Our Future at The Met Museum for the BRC, an anthology of rock music and its origins in the Black American community. Post-COVID, he formed two companies: PoetWarrior Productions, a live concert and music production company, and Blaklit Media, a media production company.

Darrell currently lives in Santa Barbara, CA, with his wife, Sally Ann Foxen.