A rapper and singer forged by pain, faith, and an unshakeable belief in his own destiny.
Some artists choose music. For Damarian known to the world as ShootinStar8, music chose him long before he was old enough to understand what that truly meant. Since the fourth grade, he has been crafting rhymes and melodies, channeling a life that most people would struggle to survive into songs that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant. Growing up in Marrero, Louisiana, he learned early on that the grind does not wait for comfort, and neither does greatness.
The name ShootinStar8 is not just a stage name, it is a declaration. “A ShootinStar because I put my all into my songs and they going to the top,” he says with the kind of quiet conviction that does not need validation. Every verse he writes carries that energy: deliberate, burning, and moving in only one direction. His debut release on February 26, 2020, marked the beginning of a public chapter that his private world had been writing for years.
As both a rapper and a singer working within the pop genre, ShootinStar8 occupies a lane that blends emotional depth with commercial accessibility. His creative process is rooted in instinct, he writes, punches in, and lets the beat lead him somewhere honest. “I find a beat that matches how I feel during the moment,” he explains. That emotional authenticity is the backbone of everything he creates, from the hard-hitting tracks on his YouTube channel to his latest release, 8 Took 1 Chance.
His current project, titled The Life Of 8, is perhaps his most ambitious statement yet, a body of work that chronicles struggle, survival, and self-belief. On days when motivation runs thin, he turns inward: “My heart and my pain” keep him going, he says. It is that rawness, the refusal to perform happiness he does not feel, that separates ShootinStar8 from artists content to stay surface-level.
He wants listeners to walk away from his music with one thing above all else: the will to overcome pain and never give up. “Believe in God,” he adds, not as a footnote, but as the very foundation of how he has survived everything Marrero threw at him. For ShootinStar8, the stage is not a performance space. It is a testimony. And if his consistency is any indication, the world is only beginning to hear what he has to say.
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