Link

Link is one of the South’s newest artists. Born and raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the city that is “On The Rise” and this young man is certainly proof of that. Link started his rapping career in 1994 while in the Army on a tour in Germany. Ten years later he is ready to let the world hear his story.

Instead of making the military a career he decided to leave the Army to pursue his music career. But while he was there, he certainly made use of his resources during his enlistment. “While everybody was buying cars and spending all of their money in the clubs, I was buying keyboards, microphones, and mixers.” And with that he started to put together his music career. With the right equipment and “ears” he started to make his own tracks “I started to make my own tracks so I would not have to use samples”. He did not want to rap on beats that were already tainted. Using the tracks that he made, he started going to studios in Germany to record. That led to performing in a couple of nightclubs and performances in a couple of Army talent contests such as the Apollo that came through Germany in 1997 where Link placed 2nd.

After a couple of attempts to try to land a deal for producing a few remixes for European artists, Link decided to pack his bags and come home to the U.S. and try to further his music career. He returned to North Carolina in 1998 and began working on new tracks. Six months later he moved to the state of Texas where he bought more equipment and concentrated even more on making his tracks better. “The better the tracks, the better the song”. With hot new tracks and a new demo that his cousin Eric Bynum had passed along and played it for a friend who happened to be one of the owners of Zahirah Entertainment, an independent record label based in Newark, New Jersey, Link hooked up the with record label and was signed for three years as a producer. Zahirah Entertainment started pushing Link to find some artists from the South that he would like to produce. Link found an artist from South Carolina named Shawnga Glenn, better known as Ill One. Ill One ended up being the first artist off the label. Link ended up featuring on Ill’s album, My World My Life, which was released on October 31, 2001. After that release, Link decided that it was time for him to go his own way and start his own label. “I just really thought that is was time to do my own thang and shine my damn self.” Now he has his own label, DIBWANI Records, which is located in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has signed and produced a few of the hottest artists in the South. In Link’s own words, “I started the label with my business partner Eddie Alie for one reason and one reason only, to put out HOT MUSIC”.