OJ Da Juiceman

Otis Williams, Jr., known professionally as OJ da Juiceman, came into the world on November 26, 1981, in Atlanta, Georgia. He spent his childhood in a single-parent home on the city’s east side alongside his mother and first absorbed the sounds of N.W.A together with other hardcore rap acts. Toward the end of the 1990s he struck up a friendship with Gucci Mane, who later emerged as one of Atlanta’s more prominent hardcore rappers during the mid-2000s on the strength of tracks such as “Icy.”

Their longstanding connection produced numerous collaborations that helped OJ da Juiceman earn notice throughout the Southern rap underground. On his own he issued more than a dozen mixtapes hosted by DJ Drama, DJ Ace, DJ Dirty Laundry, Trap-a-Holics, DJ Smallz, and additional selectors. After launching the vanity label 32 Entertainment he arranged a distribution agreement with Asylum Records, which enabled the release of his first major-label album, The Otha Side of the Trap, in 2009. The project drew heavily from earlier mixtape recordings and yielded the singles “I’m Gettin’ Money” and “Make the Trap Say Aye,” the latter again featuring Gucci Mane.