Just before turning 12, he moved to the idyllic suburbs of Pennsylvania to live with his maternal grandmother, who took care of Derek and his siblings until becoming gravely ill. Lassiter and his siblings spent their teen years in the foster-home system of Pennsylvania, where they were exposed to an ever-increasing amount of musical genres."I can track the movements of my life through music," Lassiter says now. "Soul and 60s folk music in New York. Country music at my grandmother's house, Gospel music at my grandmother's church. Whenever I speak to my older brother about a song in the 80s, we'll say, 'Oh yeah, that's when we lived at...'"

After attending college at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a brief post-collegiate stint in Houston, Lassiter eventually settled in San Francisco, where he immediately became a mainstay on the arts scene. Over the last twenty years in the Bay Area, Lassiter has fronted bands, created photography exhibits, acted in well-received plays, and wrote poetry and prose. He was profiled in Julian C. R. Okwu's book Face Forward: Young African American Men in a Critical Age, and received accolades for both his recordings and live performances, which featured Bay Area heavyweights like pianist Tammy Hall, producer/ percussionist PC Muñoz, and composer/pianist Art Khu.