Ludacris (real name Christopher Brian Bridges) was born in Champaign, Illinois, though he spent most of his childhood in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park before moving to Atlanta, Georgia just in time for high school. While in Atlanta Ludacris began to fall in love with rap music, eventually making an appearance in a Dr. Dre music video during the mid 1990’s. After high school the aspiring rapper founded the independent record label Disturbing Tha Peace Records with his friend and manager Chaka Zulu, while working a day job as a disc jockey on Atlanta hip-hop station Hot 97.5.

After his independent album Incognegro sold a respectable 300,000 copies, a number of producers - including Timbaland and Jermaine Dupri - began to show interest in signing Ludacris; he eventually signed to a record deal with Russell Simmons’ Def Jam Recordings in 2000. Ludacris released two wildly successful triple-platinum albums on Def Jam - 2000’s Back for the First Time and 2001’s Word of Mouf, which produced ubiquitous hit singles "Area Codes", "Southern Hospitality", "Rollout", and "Move Bitch" - that prompted the label to give Ludacris his own imprint, Def Jam South, that would focus on signing and promoting artists in the Southern rap scene. Ludacris’ humorous and lyrically complex style of rap generally separated him from the violent gangster-rap pack, though his irreverent and occasionally misogynistic lyrics drew the ire of many critics, including Oprah Winfrey and Bill O’ Reilly.

Ludacris went on to release three more albums on Def Jam South: Chicken-N-Beer in 2003, Red Light District in 2004, and double-disc album Release Therapy in 2006. While Chicken-N-Beer and Red Light District continued in the lighthearted, outlandish vein of his earlier work (as can be seen in the music video for "Get Back", in which Ludacris is using a set of large, inflatable arms to intimidate critics), Release Therapy veered off in a somewhat darker direction. Five singles between these three albums rose to the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, including "Stand Up", "Pimpin’ All Over the World", "Money Maker", and "Runaway Love". After appearing in a remixed version of DJ Khaled’s hit "I’m So Hood" in 2007, Ludacris has returned to the studio and plans to release a sixth album entitled Theatre of the Mind sometime in 2008.

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