A Harlem native, Dominican rapper
J.R. Writer grew up listening to
Big Pun,
Big L, and his all-time favorite,
2Pac. As a teen he worked the Harlem hip-hop circuit hard, appearing on local access cable television shows and joining every open-mike competition he could. It was at one of these battles that he met
Cam'ron and
Juelz Santana, members of a crew known as
the Diplomats or
Dipset.
Cam'ron had just signed a deal with Roc-a-Fella,
Santana was unsigned heat, and the first
Dipset mixtape was still in the works, so no matter how impressed
Cam'ron was with
Writer's fast and furious style, he was unable to take on new talent at that moment.
Writer appreciated the praise but didn't believe
Cam'ron was serious when he promised to call back once
Dipset was settled. It didn't take long for
Dipset to explode, and only a month later,
Cam'ron made good on his promise. Soon
Writer was appearing on a new
Dipset track, "Squalie," which would eventually land on
Santana's 2003 album
From Me to U. He was now a member of the
Dipset family and appeared on the crew's numerous mixtapes. A year later, he introduced his own Writer's Block series of mixtapes, landed some tracks on the
Diplomats collection
Diplomatic Immunity, Vol. 2, and appeared as a guest on
Cam'ron's album
Purple Haze. His aboveground full-length debut was supposed to hit the streets in 2005, but it took until 2006 for the ambitious
History in the Making to land on the Koch label. After the fourth volume of
Writer's Block, he hooked up with Babygrande for the fifth volume of the series, as well as 2008's
Politics and Bullshit. ~ David Jeffries