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| Proph the Problem was born Johnny Phillip Hall III on November 20th, 1982 to Dawn Defreeze and Johnny Hall Jr. at Cleveland’s Metro General Hospital. The product of teenaged parents, Proph witnessed the violence and abuse that would eventually lead to his parents’ divorce by the time he was three years old. As he grew he would find himself along with his mother and younger sister without the financial support or even any contact with his father. The result… He and his family became a stronger unit. They surely would need this strength over the next few years as they found themselves putting up in the homes of other family members, friends, and sometime even shelters. Luckily Proph’s mother did an excellent job of hiding the fact that they were poor from him and his kid sister. Without her doing this Proph may not have grown and developed the right way emotionally. At the same time he matured ahead of his peers having to be the man of the house at such an early age. When Proph’s family became financially stable his mother decided that she would do what ever it would take to keep her children as far away from the streets as possible. She knew what the street mentality had made his father and under no circumstances would risk having a son turn out the same way. It was this decision that brought Proph and his family to a suburb on Cleveland’s west side called Lakewood.
The family moved to Lakewood when Proph was 7 years old. While it was a vast improvement from moving place to place and living out of used suitcases, it was only the poorest part of town which was only a few blocks from a Cleveland area known for drugs sales and prostitution. Even with the streets that close, it was still a start. Proph’s mother worked multiple dead end jobs for several years in order to keep up with the expenses of raising two children in the suburbs on her own. This left a then 8 year old Proph to look after a five year old sister by himself for hours at a time. This is where a lot of his creativity stems from. Being stuck in the house all day with no television leaves children to find other ways to amuse themselves. He and his sister would invent new games to play in order to occupy the time until they could leave the house. Making this relationship stronger was the fact that they shared a bedroom much of their childhood. When the lights would go out they would quietly come up with word games. In this time of his life what kept Proph out of trouble was his sister. He stayed out of any real trouble because his sister delighted in disclosing the details of anything that he had done wrong to his mother who would then "spare the rod" so to speak.
In 1993 Proph’s mother would remarry. She became the wife of her childhood sweet heart shortly after the birth of another girl. With this new addition to the family it was time for another move. This move would take Proph and his family to Hawai’i where his stepfather had been running a landscaping business for several years. Proph was certainly unhappy with leaving his family and friends to travel completely to the other side of the country. It wasn’t all bad though. Proph’s mother knew that here children would live better, and get to experience something other than the struggling that they’d been accustomed to their whole lives. Living in Hawai’i allowed Proph to become more cultured and aware. He was now very far away from the streets that his mother fear would swallow him. It was in those Islands that Proph developed his originality. Being one of only a handful of African American children which included his two sisters he was different by default. Being different only taught him to adapt to other kinds of people which birthed his "get along with everybody" attitude. When all of the glitz faded Proph found his mother struggling once again, this time on the inside. His stepfather would drink heavily which in turn would cause him to verbally and physically abuse Proph’s mother. Proph discovered this on night as we awoke from his sleep to the cries of his mother when she had been punched several times by his stepfather. It was on this night that Proph’s life changed forever. As many people do in the islands Proph had a machete which he kept stored under his bed. He laid there in his room wanting desperately to reach his machete and rescue his mother… by any means necessary. To this day it is still a puzzle to him as to what kept him in his bed and out of the juvenile system. Wanting to make this marriage work Proph’s mother stayed in her faith in God and endured this abuse for another year before the separation of her and her husband who she discovered was cheating. Proph and his family would then move once more before returning to Ohio on July 4th of 1996… their Independence Day.
Back in Lakewood at age fourteen, Proph really began developing a love for hip hop. Lakewood was now become more racially integrated. With more African American classmates there was now much more access to hip hop. This was the only way to get a hold of it because his mother was so strict on keeping their home Holy. With the release of Nas’ album "It was Written" Proph developed a relationship with hip hop. He would experiment with rhyming and discovered that he had a talent for it. Music had always been in his life because his mother would play all kinds of it. With the release of the song "Second Round K.O." by Canibus in 1998, Proph really caught the bug. He loved the originality and the cleverness of being able to destroy opposition using only his words. Around this time his class mate and best friend Nydrew Brown had begun writing and recording his own music. With his best friend as inspiration he began writing for himself. He would pen only battle rhymes at first. Recording was still not in his mind. He just loved writing verses and the recognition he would get when he shared them. As time passed he grew ever more serious about writing not only battle verses but songs now. This is when he started through a list of monikers which lead him to the name Proph. The name started out as "The Prophet" which was given to him by his mother who was a very spiritual person. She gave this name on the strength of the biblical significance of it. In the bible, a prophet was the person who would receive a message directly from God which he would then spread to the people. Growing with the name The Prophet, he wanted to take away from some of the dark Wu-esque sound and shortened the name to simple Proph. Finding out that there were other emcees going by that name he decided to check out there music. After doing this he decided that he was the only one on this list that was really a problem… This is when he took the name Proph the Problem. Proph stepped inside of a basement recording booth for the first time at age 20. His peers noticed his lyrical prowess almost immediately with the polysyllabic rhymes he penned. After the remarks he received on his first recordings Proph was officially hooked. He found himself scribbling rhymes on gum wrappers, napkins and whatever else he had handy. However, Proph was have stretch for a few years where he would be working anywhere form two to three jobs at a time to afford his rent. Becoming with reacquainted in the summer of 2005 with high school classmate Jason Hamper who was running his own upstart hip hop label (1Mind Productions) he now had unlimited free studio time.
That fall he would pick up his pen again. Proph performed his first show with only one song to his credit in December of 2005. Since then Proph has been a fixture on the Cleveland underground hip hop scene. Wowing audiences with his carefully constructed lyrics he developed a reputation for being a natural. Fueled by the love and the hate pf his peers Proph would press on with the goal on releasing an album. After many performances both empty and packed, Proph would finally complete his debut entitled "The Proph Lp… Welcome Back to Hip Hop" on July 9th of 2007. With a growing buzz Proph is expected by many to be the next artist to lead the Cleveland hip hop scene to a global level. Having such strong shoulders from carrying the world at an early age he is more than ready to carry the city. The rest is as we would say history. |
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![x [AWAY]](http://cdn.ursession.com/M/PHOTOS.487.png)
