Eighty4 Fly

It was around age 12 when Eighty4 Fly, aka Devon Taylor, started making music. He followed the example of a handful of brothers and cousins who rapped—including NoClue, who holds the Guinness Record as the fastest rapper in the world—but in reality music has been near omnipresent since his early childhood. Eighty4 Fly just ran with it. Born and raised in Seattle, the budding emcee’s first time in a real studio was at age 16 when he ended up in a booth with West Coast producer Funk Daddy (Sir Mix-a-Lot, E-40). But after putting out a single project, Eighty4 Fly was incarcerated and spent 2002-2005 behind bars. He doesn’t advertise that fact, nor use it as a claim to some sort of gangsta street cred; instead, it was a chance for a hardheaded kid to soul search and reinvent himself. As counterintuitive as it sounds the experience was a good one.