When he was 12, he stole his first set of actual turntables and started making music for his groups and local artists. Sparks was a rapper and a dancer who, with his entourage, would win local talent shows. Around that time, he and his mother moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood in Boston. Run-ins with the law throughout his youth prompted his mother to send him to live with his father in Jr high school, who struggled with alcoholism, in Randolph, Massachusetts. He graduated from Randolph High School. After high school at age 19, he got a job with UPS and moved back to Dorchester. Eventually, he moved back in to his mother's home and built a recording studio in her basement where he would make original mixtapes and travel up and down the East Coast to hand them out. An injury sustained while working for UPS required Sparks to undergo spinal surgery, severely limiting his ability to perform manual labor. He began focusing more earnestly on music in the aftermath. Career 1999–2005: Career beginnings with mixtapes, radio shows, and first album From his basement studio at his mother's house, Sparks was able to convince major record labels that he ran a successful online radio show. Around the year 2000, he conducted interviews there with acts like Eminem, Common, Sean Kingston, Talib Kweli, the Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, the Clipse, and others. He ran the interviews on the radio station where he worked, Boston's Hot 97.7. Sparks was also able to accumulate freestyle raps and performances (usually over his own beats) from these artists that he would put into mixtapes. In 2002, he won the award for New Mixtape DJ of the Year at the Justo Mixtape Awards. By 2004, Sparks was hosting weekly radio shows on Hot 97.7, Baltimore's 92Q, and Hartford, Connecticut's Hot 93.7. He also hosted a syndicated hip hop show, SmashTime Radio, through SupeRadio that aired in 40 cities. That year, he was also named the Radio DJ of the Year at the Mixshow Power Summit Awards. Also in 2004, Sparks co-founded MixUnit.com, an online mixtape marketplace that ultimately became one of the largest hubs for mixtapes on the internet. He often released his own mixtapes and bootlegs on the site, including a series dubbed SmashTime Blends and several Get Familiar volumes. Acts featured on his tapes have included, The Game, Snoop Dogg, Destiny's Child, T.I.,