Taheim Bryan, growing up in Queens during the height of the drug epidemic in the 1980s. Seeking the leadership that his abusive and mostly absent father hadn’t provided, Bryan became captivated by the streets, rising to prominence in the community after his first arrest and trip to notoriously hard prison, Riker’s Island. It would be the first of many bids, and the aspiring screenwriter would spend much of his late teens and 20s in a cell. After his last release, Bryan was hired in the mailroom at Loud Records. He leveraged relationships he’d made there and in prison, along with hard work and a resolve not to return to his previous activities. He’d go on to meet some of rap’s biggest influences, including Fat Joe and Ice-T. It was during this time he began writing. He knew that he had a knack for storytelling, and there weren’t many production company executives that could tell tales from the trenches the way he could.