David Lamarr Blake, better known to many by his stage name Stones was born July 31st 1988 to parents Maretha Brown-Blake and David Blake sr. in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. An area known as one of the roughest neighborhoods in not only the borough of Brooklyn but also the entire state of New York. Brownsville is known to many across the nation as a breeding ground for drugs, prostitution and statistically high murder rate’s but, for Stones Brownsville is the place he calls “Home”.In one interview Stones described his birth place as “a place you see things you would’ve swore only happened in the movies”. When described by his peers Stones is always depicted as the “laid back” type and it was that characteristic which helped him manage to stay out of a lot of situations he saw first hand. When asked about his “laid back” persona Stones replied, “My dude Smiles always told me I’m like a mystery because of the way I analyze things but let few people get close enough to actually analyze me, I guess that’s because I was taught from a young age how to move militant”.
Stones, is the youngest of two children and described his relationship with his sister Kaneika as very close, “We’re only two years apart so growing up we were real close and developed a real brother-sister bond due to the fact that we were almost always in the same schools and hung in some of the same circles on top of living in the same 1 bedroom apartment [laughs]”.He was raised by both parents until about the age of 12, the age Stones refers to as “when things started to go wrong”. “I was use to having my mother and father around but when they split up it was like everything just started looking different to me, there was only one income coming in the household which was my mother’s and she was on a fixed income so we were barley making it. I went from being alright when it came to paper, to being all fucked up in the game in about 2 seconds...”.After Stones’ father left the household, Stones’ whole persona went left, “I started chilling on the block later, missing school, just basically doing a lot of things I wasn’t doing before”.But one good thing did come from from the whole situation which was the blossoming of Stones’ rapping ability, he was rapping prior to the situation but now he really had something to talk about with more experience of the streets under his belt, “I started to get more exposed to the streets and really saw first hand things that were happening out there because half the time I was with the person that was doing it or did it so, I started writing music from a different aspect”.
Rapping was a hobby Stones picked up from watching his cousin Kenyatta Blake also known as Buckshot of the highly regarded 90's rap group Blackmoon and ceo of Duck down records, “I use to just sit down and listen to Buck and Wu-Tang all day to study how they would put words together. Buck let me know it was real because I use to think rappers were some kind of super human’s beamed down from the sky [laughs] but, he was someone I actually saw in the flesh often and saw on T.V. too so, I realized if I wanted to I could do it also.”.Although Stones credits his early development to emcees of hip hop’s “golden age” he quickly developed a style of his own. Stones credits his cousin for his deep interest in the game and showed a great appreciation for his cousin in previous interviews stating, “...that’s my nigga right there I see him as a older brother, it’s crazy how sometime we don’t speak to each other for a while seeing how he be having a crazy schedule but when we do get up it be like we just spoke yesterday. He let me know what it is and backs me a hundred percent”. “Older brother” is not a over statement either considering how Stones and Buckshot do bare a striking resemblance and stones often runs into that question.
In 2006 Stones released his first mixtape entitled, “The new stone age” which was accepted well by critics but, unfortunately did not circulate too far outside of the tri-state area due to lack of promotion. The project was much more than a mixtape to everyone that heard it and according to Stones that’s how he wanted it to come across so, when he hear’s praises he’s very appreciative. When asked about his approach to “The new stone age” stones replied, “when I started recording for ‘the new stone age’ I approached it like I was recording an album because that’s how I approach all of my music, I feel like the people got to hear my best material every time I get on the mic. The only difference between any of my projects and my first album when it does drop will be a major label budget and stronger relationships that should make my collabs and production much more interesting for my audience. After the release of “The new stone age” stones has worked on many more projects and is setting up to release “The stepping stone” mixtape in late 2008. He has also been featured on many Hip Hop web sites suck as, Grandgood.com, Rapindustry, Crackspace, and many more. Stones has even been mentioned on one of the leading hip hop sites, Hiphopgame.com as an artist on the come up to look out for by columnist Brian Kaysar aka Mr. 730.
