This politically conscious US hip-hop duo comprises M-1 (Lavon Alfred, 1973, Jamaica, West Indies) and Stic.man (b. Clayton Gavin, 1975, Shadeville, Florida, USA), who met in 1990 while both were attending Florida A&M University. Dead Prez differs from many politicized rap groups in that they came to activism first and music second. Alfred, who has since adopted the African name Mutulu Olugbala, grew up in Brooklyn’s Albany housing projects. Expelled from Erasmus Hall high school for delinquent behaviour, he temporarily relocated to North Carolina to complete his diploma but afterwards returned to New York where he supported himself by selling crack cocaine. He eventually applied to university, was accepted and met Gavin. A year later, his mother was apprehended on a drug-possession charge. Gavin had witnessed the effects of the crack epidemic on his own family growing up in Florida and the arrest strengthened the political convictions of both, inspiring them to become involved with Tallahassee’s Black Survival Movement. Their activism eventually brought them to New York, where they were discovered by Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian in 1995 at a block party in Brooklyn. By the following year Jamar had brokered them a recording contract with Steve Rifkind’s Loud Records.