Twenty-year-old Zernardo "ZMoney" Tate grew up in various parts of Chicago's West Side, in the tough Lawndale and Austin communities. He went to grammar school with Chance The Rapper's original touring DJ, DJ Oreo. His parents, like many Chicagoans, came from Mississippi, and his rap style reflects those Southern roots. "Coming from where I'm from," he says, "I never really felt [Chicago] rappers. It's just my style. Shouts out to all of them, but I never really felt them. I always had that South. That South in everything."

He didn't start out as a rapper; his uncle was a basketball player, as was he, until he dropped out of high school as a sophomore. Like his father before him—who is currently incarcerated—Z turned to the streets. "I needed some money," he say neutrally, as if it were a simple fact rather than a moral dilemma. He started hustling, but always had eyes elsewhere. "I always wanted to be in the entertainment business."

Rapping hadn't occurred to him yet, so he started throwing parties. "The first party I had was when I was sixteen," he recalls. "The place—we had three or four thousand people in there. The second floor was bouncing, finna cave in. So the Fire Marshall came in and said the party was over with." Z's party-promoting career dovetailed with his interest in rap, but he preferred to stay behind the scenes. "I always wanted somebody out my group that could rap. Like, my man! Yeah, we gon’ push him! But the whole time, I had everything that I was looking for." It wasn't until an impromptu trip to Miami in the summer of 2012—where he met Lil Wayne and Rocko—that he returned to Chicago and realized rap was something he wanted to do, too.