I didn’t just start off as a non-explicit 19 year old Hip-Hop artist named L.E.X. When I was little, it was just me as Alexis Dean who always played basketball. Until the age of seven when I lost my father, Diesel (Alexis Dean Sr.), a rap artist from Milwaukee, WI. After this happened, I internally used basketball and music to reconnect with him, so in middle school I began to get interested in making music for fun. It went from constant freestyling and making simple beats, to finally writing my own songs and making my own beats. Basketball was still my first love, but when I was refused to play for my high school basketball team by the coach I used my spare time writing poetry, and soon converting it into songs. At the age of 16, I did my first two open mics, and after that my performing increased rapidly. In just my year of being seventeen, I won two talent shows, performed in over seven shows that summer (including for a crowd of 500+), began to work on my debut mixtape “PURE” (which released 01-01-10 and included songs produced by me), and also got the opportunity to write a song for two schools including my high school Rufus King. My accomplishments are rising, fan base is rising, statistics are rising, and my exposure is rising. Especially with the release of my second mixtape “RollingStone” on 9/11/10, EP “DOPE” featuring all original music, and blog sites exposing their viewers to me, and being on a television show called Spectrums. Being that I’m still only a teenager, the sky is the limit. After working with a producer of Bow Wow, and collaborating with various artists and doing features I’m just trying to see a bright future ahead and continue to grow. Even though I have my “own swag” that I feel I bring to Hip-Hop, like me not cursing or speaking explicit at all, my inspirations are Tupac Shakur, Lil’ Wayne, Eminem and J. Cole with lyrical similarities to Lupe Fiasco. There have been many influences in my life, but the biggest ones are the artists that didn’t make it to “superstardom” because those artists never gave me any personal influence. The two artists who influenced me the most were my father Diesel, and currently my uncle and mentor Blade 2000. Only time will tell what is next for me, but hopefully I’ll continue to inspire kids who have big dreams.