Born in the city of Fort Worth, Texas, Isiko was first influenced by his father - Larry "Dr. Disco" Smiley. His father, a regional working event and club DJ, as well as radio DJ at the infamous POWER 106 FM in Los Angeles, CA, exposed Isiko to white-label music from all over the world. Dr. Disco had a regular gig at the YMCA in Fort Worth and at one of the parties there, Isiko witnessed his father move a crowd to tears as they danced (there was something turbulent going on in the country) and it was then that Isiko decided that he wanted to affect people like that. A few years later, Isiko went to a house party that had Ernie G on the Wheels of Steel. Ernie G mixed LL Cool J's "Bad" with the Biz Markie instrumental of "Make the Music with Your Mouth Biz" and the party went BANANAS! That night, all that was on his mind was "Music can make people cry and it can make people hype... I'm soooo IN!" Isiko married Hip Hop that night and boy has it been a bittersweet relationship with a plethora of babies born of the union. Isiko started off as a DJ like his father. His father, a progressive man, put computers and synthesizers in the studio for his sons and encouraged them to explore, to do more, to accomplish more than he had accomplished. We're talking the early 80s. We're talking Casio keyboards and Atari, Ti35s, TRS-80s, Commodore 128s, boom-boxes, and monster house systems that the whole damn neighborhood can hear when "the knob" on the receiver is on 5 out of 20. We're talking about that era just before NWA spoke to the world as if they were Isiko. Isiko and his brother, Eric, along with their friends, had a blast growing up in Forest Hill. Danny Powell's family had a video camera and Isiko and Eric's family had the space and DJ equipment (of course, they didn't have their parents' permission to use it at that time LOL!) and they recorded break dancing routines, their spoofs of Saturday Night Live, and themselves singing along to their favorite music. This was an everyday occurrence during the summers while their parents were at work. Then in 5th grade, Isiko and Marcus Raven created a commercial for a class project. The product was Star Wars Dog Food and they did the whole thing from scratch. And in 8th grade, Isiko participated in a spoof of the Tastes Great! - Less Filling! campaign at school. Isiko’s high school freshman year was a blur for Isiko DJing in his room, making mixtapes, learning how to troubleshoot and repair his equipment, all while also continuing to learn to play music on a the Casio keyboard. A friend, DeMargus Johnson, loaned Isiko a Synsonic Drums machine and from there the music really took a turn in a direction where money littered the pathway. By then, Isiko was convinced he would work in media affecting people by telling stories with music and video and that he would also be that "tech head" that knew how to professionally use the equipment required to produce media. Family issues put Isiko in an ominous situation at a young age, however. Isiko became involved with a street organization and was taken to prison for several crimes. "Stop 6 and Forest Hill was like the place that had me in like this protected, almost utopian place that everybody wanted to be in. But Lake Como... That was a whole other situation. I was in the elements with wolves and sheep without wool. And that's all there was in Lake Como - Wolves and Sheep. I had to pick what I was gonna be." he says. "And I ain't no damn sheep." When one looks at Lake Como in the mid-80s up to the mid-90s, a West Fort Worth community that is about one square mile big, you begin to see the story of how Fort Worth became known as Fort Murder Worth. Isiko was square in the middle of it all. The whole city was against Lake Como or so it seemed to Isiko. Talking to him about that time period in Fort Worth you find a reason to understand why Isiko became a wolf. "For a few months, I was actually on the fence concerning the wolf-sheep issue," Isiko quips with a smirk. "I credit a cat named Cedrick Yarborough for making me pick. Probably the worst fist fight I EVER had." The felonies began to find Isiko. And so did the plantation. Prison. Uh... They're the same thing if you did not know. If you did not know that the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution LEGALIZED slavery, flipped plantations into prison facilities and the Patty Rollers into modern day police, and then that plantation owners and their supporters did everything they could think of to criminalize the formerly enslaved, you might want to have a conversation with Isiko. He has lived it. And despite knowing right from wrong, he still got caught up in what many have excellent reason to think the "powers that be" made available so they could incarcerate more and more young Black men... The crack cocaine epidemic (along with the heroin and cocaine – Boy & Girl – epidemic as well) across the country in cities like Fort Worth destroyed the nuclear family. It separated Isiko's generation from their parents' generation and then dubbed Isiko's generation as "Super Predators" and their parents as "Crackheads." And from there, young people like the young Isiko were taken to prison at record rates only rivaling the prison rates associated with the mass imprisonment of ex-slaves when the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed and enacted in conjunction with the Black Codes, Pig Law, and Jim Crowe. It's still happening today people... "I always look on the bright side of that," he says looking back. "It was bleak at best while I was in the middle of it. I was in a dark place in here [pointing to his heart] and though I still to this day wonder how I made it out the other end, I am glad I went through it all and is here to not only tell others about mine but to help people who want help who are in the middle of their’s. I was actually put in a position to find out who I am and to also change what I did not like about myself. I was able to transform myself, and don't get the shit twisted - the Texas prison system only provided the place. It had absolutely NOTHING to do with who I am today. I did that with the help and personal tutelage of the Most High and my Ancestors through brothers and sisters who were sent directly to help me with me." Today, a graduate of Alvin Community College, Texas Southern University, and Texas Seminary Christian University, Isiko produces media that tell these stories in a tasteful tactful manner. That's what he produces. Media. Radio. Television. And film. Even so, at the heart of all of this is Hip-Hop. First built in 1994 as N-Side Job Records, The UBN (The UrbanFire Binge Networks) was born out of the dissatisfaction Isiko experienced while moving in the mainstream media. Created to be an alternative industry, The UBN was designed to sit outside of but run adjacent to the mainstream industry to give more people the opportunity to tell some good stories and make some good money doing it. He's worked in 46 of the 48 contiguous states at least five times each doing something related to radio, TV, and film production from 30-second commercials to feature films with emerging personalities to celebrities. He's done everything but porn. "Ain't gon' do that..." Staring into nothing, Isiko had this to say:

Everything has always been about the music. Music kept me sane in the darkest most violent time of my life. Music gave me a voice when I thought nobody else cared to listen. Music saved my life when I was walking around this bitch trying to make somebody kill me. Music saved my life, Cuz. Music saved my life...