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Born Stephen Hunte, March 4th 1990 in Queens, New York, Criss would have never thought that eight years after his birth, he would be intrigued by Hip-Hop music. "Growing up my mother never wanted me to be exposed to any rap music, because she saw it all as gangster rap." After his parents divorce and his mother moving him and his sister up to Connecticut, Criss started to write music after hearing a verse from DMX on "Money,Power, Respect." Going against his mothers wishes, he started to write gangster rap. "Now when I look back at it, it really didn't make any sense because I was nine years old talking about killing a man with an AK-47,"he recalls. The irony of the situation was that his mother never wanted him to fall into making music, but her musical taste around the house had a major impact on his artistry. "My mother listened to everything from Oldies, to Calypso or Reggae(his West Indian background), and R&B, so coming up listening to all this different stuff just filled my head up with ideas.

After a failed attempt at a rap group with fellow childhood friends Kevin "Fil$" Fils, Mike "JDot Bonez" Edwards, and Howard "Truth" Russell, Criss decided to go solo and perfect his craft. Luckily when he was in the rap group he linked up with his soon to be producer/mentor Xavier "Aviles". "Man to be honest with you, X is the one who made Criss Lyric, he was hard on me when it came to this music because he saw something great, and it paid off in the long run," he states. "The n*** just has that thing about him that when ever I do something, I want to impress him because he sees the greatness in me through my music."

As of now Criss Lyric is working on his debut mixtape "In Search of Cool" with production from Aviles, Zulu, and others. "To me I think that this mixtape is whats going to be the grey area in this black/white world of Hip-Hop. There is no way that anybody cant relate to this cd because the music is so diverse. If you listen to the cd you cant really put a finger on it because you'll hear one song and say Ok, yeah, he's this kind of rapper, but then on the next track I can flip it and have you saying oh shit, whats this? Thats the beautiful thing about ISOC because it has music for everybody."

When asked what the future looks like for Criss Lyric, he replied saying, "Shit who knows, my future isn't clear but it isn't dim either, I know that there's something great out there for me, I just have to work hard to get it, nothing comes with out hard work, and everything happens in due time..."

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