Details on how the Hit Row faction was formed in WWE NXT

During an appearance on Busted Open Radio, AJ Francis aka Top Dolla commented on how the Hit Row faction was formed in WWE NXT…

“Well I’ve been doing this music conglomerate faction for a few years now, when I was on the indies, when I was at 3D, my crew was called The Row and I was Suga Bear, as a play on Suge Knight obviously. When I got to WWE, Ryan Katz, who works in creative for WWE, was like ‘Hey man. We’ve got you and Briana (B-Fab) and Tehuti (Ashante Adonis). You guys got good vibes together, I’d like to see what you guys can do together’. So we came together and we did a thing called The Hitmakers. And that was the original name of the crew. It was just the three of us and we were working and everything was going cool.”

“And then right around the time we were about to go, Hunter pulled me aside, pulled Swerve aside, and said, ‘Would you guys be cool working with Swerve too?’ And Swerve is cool people. Swerve is actually a rapper. The thing is, if we were going to add somebody to the crew, it had to be authentic. It had to be someone who fit the crew. Briana is actually a rapper. I have two albums, I’ve been on tour twice, I have around five million streams. Swerve is actually a rapper. So to add him just added more levels of authenticity. And it added a veteran to the crew, it added somebody that has on TV namesake since day one, and I think it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to the crew. Obviously we all actually get along. It’s not a TV prop, it’s not a creative thing. We get to do our own thing, and that’s props to Triple H for understanding that we’ve got something different than anybody else can do right now in the company. He’s just letting us run with it, and I couldn’t be more grateful.” (quotes courtesy of WrestlingInc.com)