Bossman

Drawing from the vibrant club sounds pulsing through Baltimore, the city's own Bossman fuses the raw edge of underground hip-hop with a preference for pop-rap's broader appeal. Travis Davon Holifield entered the world on the northeast side of the Charm City. At age eleven, both parents received prison sentences for robbery, leaving him to spend his early teenage years under his grandmother's roof. There he formed a youthful duo reminiscent of Kris Kross, taking local stages and talent contests with direction from his uncle. Once high school arrived, he left that child-rap period behind, adopting the name Jimmy Hash and assembling the Northeast Kings, a hardcore collective of area heavyweights, early in 2000; the crew dissolved several years later. Reemerging as Bossman, the Baltimore MC plunged into the city's mixtape circuit, scoring radio favorites such as "Off da Record" and the Baltimore club anthem "Oh!," the latter crafted by local club mainstay Rod Lee. He issued his debut full-length, Law and Order, independently in late 2004, moving ten thousand copies within weeks through his own grassroots promotion. The effort drew offers from Columbia, Universal, and Interscope, yet he declined them all to ink a deal with Virgin Records via Atlanta hitmaker Jermaine Dupri, then heading the label's urban division. Bossman aimed to bring Law and Order to the imprint with an entirely fresh set of recordings, but the project faced repeated postponements.