CL8 The GR8

Clayton Darnell Duncan was born December 10th, 1991 in Langley Air Force Base, the second talented child of his mother Callie. He spent the next couple of years traveling around as a military baby, until finally coming to Newport (Bad) News, VA where he would reside up until now. Growing up, Clayt was always different from his peers. Although he lived in "The Creek", a neighborhood in downtown Newport News, an area characterized by violence and misfortune, he still managed to stay away...

Clayton Darnell Duncan was born December 10th, 1991 in Langley Air Force Base, the second talented child of his mother Callie. He spent the next couple of years traveling around as a military baby, until finally coming to Newport (Bad) News, VA where he would reside up until now. Growing up, Clayt was always different from his peers. Although he lived in "The Creek", a neighborhood in downtown Newport News, an area characterized by violence and misfortune, he still managed to stay away from the negative influences of the streets, focusing on school and his first love, basketball. "Even though I stopped playin' in high school, truthfully if it wasn't for basketball my life would probably be completely different. My Moms never let me go very far from the house 'cause she was afraid I'd get into trouble. So I would just be in my backyard all day, all night playing basketball. It was all I knew." It was around the age of 11 when Clayt would take an interest into writing rhymes through the influence of his older brother Clifton, who was heavily into hardcore and underground rap in opposition to the mainstream. This influence would greatly affect the youngster’s style and creativity with words for years to come. Following in his brother's footsteps, as a teen Clayt would enter battles online, testing his ability against others over the web. This eventually grew old though, and the teen stayed away from rhyming until 9th grade, when a few of his classmates asked him to feature on a mixtape. This lead Clayt to hook up wit close friends Tony Baze (aka T-Baze) and Emilio Carter (Millz Tha Real Deal) to start recording his own tracks for the very first time. It was around this time where he cockily gave himself the title "Clayt the Great", after getting the hang of this rap thing. Soon after, HeroVillain CEO L'Antonio Gholson seemed to have liked what he heard, and asked the newcomer to complete a whole mixtape in affiliation of The HeroVillain Brand. With every track he laid down Clayt seemed to fall deeper in love with the music making process, and as a result over the next two years he recorded two mixtapes (The GR8ness and the GR8ness Volume 2) all on his own. Over the summer of '08 Clayt hooked up with a new group of friends, Icemayne, Mic Mike, and Yung Dame to form a group called FBI (Fresh Boys Industries). The group was managed by Icemayne's aunt, and made many travels to Atlanta where they hooked up with musical composer Leander Tate. As the year went on the group grew popular, yet things did not go as planned and the young group soon learned that things would not always be easy and given to them. The group ultimately went on to do a few shows and concluded by putting out a mixtape entitled "Back 2 Skool" in the summer of '09. After the conclusion of FBi, Clayt was still determined to pursue his musical passion, and upon seeing the opportunity 4144 Ent was giving Zaiah Burke, an old schoolmate, he decided to hit them up, and the rest is history...in the making. CL8 the GR8 has the ability to add his own page of hip hop history, and achieve his potential gr8ness. 4144 Entertainment is proud to assist CL8 with this achievement, starting with his 4144 Ent debut mixtape '8 Track'. 4144 Ent believes that gr8ness will come...