Southside Chicago poet turned rapper Malik Yusef (aka the Wordsmyth) started honing his craft in the mid-'90s with appearances at open-mike nights. While he was performing a spoken word set, director Ted Witcher was in the audience looking for inspiration for his next movie about urban poetry. Impressed by Yusef's loose but powerful free-form style, he hired him as a coach for Lorenz Tate in 1997's #Love Jones. This opened some doors in Hollywood, leading to appearances on BET's #Rap City and HBO's #Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry TV shows, where he performed I Spit.... Major corporations started taking notice, too, and he was invited to appear on some promotional compilations by Nike, ASCAP, Sprite, and Coca-Cola. Branching into the rap world was a natural progression, and he was featured on Channel Live's Armaghetto and Common's One Day It'll All Make Sense albums. R&B singer Carl Thomas also featured Yusef on his debut album, Emotional, and this led to a tour together. While on the road, he met jazz saxophonist Mike Phillips from Hidden Beach and the two paired up in 2002 to make a spoken word jazz song titled This Is Not a Game, which was selected to appear on a CD-ROM included with pairs of Michael Jordan's 17 shoes. Jordan explained in ad campaigns that the shoes had a sleek design, "inspired by the smooth lines of a jazz solo." Moving back to rap, in 2003, Yusef released his debut solo album, The Great Chicago Fire -- A Cold Day in Hell, which featured a long list of production credits and guest appearances that included Kanye West, Xtreme, Chantay Savage, Common, and Bigg Nastee, among others. ~ Jason Lymangrover, Rovi