D/Will - TSAF 111213

A lot of emcees talk about making it. They rhyme about flossing and shining, but D/Will is a man of action. A producer in every sense of the word, when he's not creating beats, he's writing bars.

Kansas City hip-hop is the rose that grew through concrete. Battered but beautiful, its petals grow stronger and stronger, and D/Will is a part of its evolution.

Born Denzel Williams in 1982, he doesn't have the stereotypical hard-knock life emcees and producers often fabricate to make it in the game. He grew up in suburban North Kansas City, in a two-parent home with his brother. He's proud of his good childhood, college education and faith in God. And none of it kept him from falling in love with hip-hop.

He'd always been a fan, but it was the summer of 1993, things got serious between D/Will and hip-hop. "Chief Rocka" by the Lord of the Undergrounds was inescapable, its infectious hook and funky, raw production intrigued him. He collected cans and bottles and did yard work and odd jobs to save up $18 so he could buy the tape. "Here Come the Lords," was worth every penny, because the seamless, sample-based production on that album planted a seed within D/Will.

It would take seven years for that seed to bloom: when D/Will finally got a drum machine — the Akai MPC2KXL. At the urging of friend and underground emcee, CN-N, D/Will began to study the art of beatmaking. Inspired by Dilla, Madlib, Pharrell and Timbaland, D/Will started to craft a sound of his own: soulful, honest and bass heavy. Together, they pushed each other, bars for beats.

In 2003, CN-N moved away, leaving D/Will without an emcee to produce for. So he began to write on his own, mastering the marriage between beats and rhymes. In 2006, his cunning lyrics laced with his soulful sounds created a buzz in Kansas City when he released "The OH NO! Mixtape." A year later he smashed the scene with another mixtape, "Just Add Water," earning acclaim from Okayplayer, local media, fellow emcees and producers alike.

For a lot of artists, hip-hop is a dream, a goal, something to aspire to and talk about. For D/Will, it's more than that. This is his calling, something he was born to do. It's already written. And this is just the beginning.