DJ Drama

DJ Drama, born Tyree Simmons, grew up between West Philadelphia and Germantown and moved to Atlanta for Clark Atlanta University, where he fell in with Don Cannon and DJ Sense. He started the Gangsta Grillz mixtape series in 2001 and founded Aphilliates Music Group with them in 2003. T.I.’s Down With the King and Jeezy’s Trap or Die came out of it.

In January 2007 thirty officers in SWAT gear raided the Aphilliates studio alongside representatives of the RIAA, arresting Drama and Cannon and seizing more than eighty thousand CDs. Neither was ever convicted of the racketeering charge; the felony was reduced, and the episode is now read as the moment the industry tried and failed to shut the mixtape down.

He later co-founded Generation Now, which signed Lil Uzi Vert and Jack Harlow.

He still hosts Gangsta Grillz radio in Atlanta, and a set from him is hosted rather than mixed silently — the voice over the records is the whole point.

Written from Wikipedia and NPR.