Born in Fort Myers, Florida, Plies started his rap career after dropping out of college, where he played wide receiver for Miami University of Ohio before transferring to the University of Central Florida. He would eventually leave school and give up on his football career.  

Plies would team up with his stepbrother Ronnell Lawrence Lavette, aka Big Gates, to form Big Gates Records. Though Plies initially didn’t want to rap, he eventually relented. His first verse would appear on “Tell Dem Krackers Dat.” This single led Gates and Plies to travel to Miami to promote the offering, which eventually led him to being signed to Slip-n-Slide Records in 2004, where he would gain notoriety for his mixtapes.

Plies’ 2007 debut studio album was titled The Real Testament and featured the T-Pain-assisted single “Shawty,” and “Hypnotized,” featuring Akon. He would drop two more albums in 2008, Definition of Real and Da REAList, before dropping Goon Affiliated in 2010.

Plies would release two mixtapes in 2011, “I Fuck With The DJ”  and “Aristotle,” and would go on to release his fifth studio album, titled “Purple Heart,” later in that year.  Plies would go onto release four more mixtapes to date.