Clinton Sparks

Clinton Charls Sparks (born September 18, 1975) is an American DJ and record producer from Boston, Massachusetts.

He initially started his career as a rapper, dancer, producer, and DJ who gained notoriety by making bootleg remixes and mixtapes and parlayed that into hosting radio shows on Boston's Hot 97.7, Baltimore's 92Q, Hartford's Hot 93.7, and Sirius XM's Shade 45 (among others).

He was the long-time host of a worldwide syndicated radio show called SmashTime Radio (also referred to as Get Familiar with Clinton Sparks).

Around the year 2000, he conducted interviews there with acts like Eminem, Common, Sean Kingston, Talib Kweli, the Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep, the Clipse, and others.

He ran the interviews on the radio station where he worked, Boston's Hot 97.7.

Sparks was also able to accumulate freestyle raps and performances (usually over his own beats) from these artists that he would put into mixtapes.

In 2002, he won the award for New Mixtape DJ of the Year at the Justo Mixtape Awards.

By 2004, Sparks was hosting weekly radio shows on Hot 97.7, Baltimore's 92Q, and Hartford, Connecticut's Hot 93.7.

He also hosted a syndicated hip hop show, SmashTime Radio, through SupeRadio that aired in 40 cities.

That year, he was also named the Radio DJ of the Year at the Mixshow Power Summit Awards.

Also in 2004, Sparks co-founded MixUnit.com, an online mixtape marketplace that ultimately became one of the largest hubs for mixtapes on the internet.

He often released his own mixtapes and bootlegs on the site, including a series dubbed SmashTime Blends and several Get Familiar volumes.

Acts featured on his tapes have included, The Game, Snoop Dogg, Destiny's Child, T.I., Usher, Ciara, Fat Joe, Cam'ron, Kanye West, Jim Jones, Amerie, Ashanti, Ja Rule, Fabolous, and numerous others.

The site helped mixtape DJs like DJ Drama and DJ Khaled accumulate a following.

Sparks has also made music of his own, including the 2005 album, Maybe You Been Brainwashed, and the 2014 EP, ICONoclast.

In 2005, Sparks produced the Re-Up Gang's We Got It 4 Cheap mixtapes (both Volume 1 and Volume 2).

The Re-Up Gang was composed of both members of the Clipse (Pusha T and No Malice) and two other rappers (Ab-Liva and Sandman).

Volume 2 is widely considered a classic, and it also popularized Sparks' vision of the "mixtape-as-album" format.

That year, Sparks began hosting a show on Eminem's Sirius satellite radio channel, Shade 45, and added another weekly show in North Carolina.

In 2012, he was nominated for a Grammy for his production work on Lady Gaga's Born This Way.

That year, he also won a BMI songwriting award for writing Pitbull's "Shut It Down" and has since won several ASCAP Awards with DJ Snake as part of his Get Familiar Music publishing company.

He has written and produced songs for a number of notable acts, including Akon, Ludacris, 2 Chainz, Ty Dolla Sign, Lil Uzi Vert, Big Sean, and numerous others.

He is the current host and owner of the national hip hop radio station Get Familiar Radio on Dash Radio, a digital radio platform for which he served as vice president from 2016 to 2019.

He was featured on the song "Saturday Night," which was featured on the soundtrack for the 2016 stand-up comedy film, Kevin Hart: What Now?.

Additionally, Sparks co-founded the mixtape database, MixUnit.com; served as music correspondent for the E! series, The Daily 10 and E! News; and has held executive positions at a variety of companies including Karmaloop, FaZe Clan, Islide, PingTank, IC Realtech, and Dash Radio.

In July 2020, Sparks co-founded and became the chief business development officer of the newly formed XSET, an esports and lifestyle gaming organization.

He also hosts the Twitch show, Win Big with Clinton Sparks, and authored his first book, How to Win Big in the Music Business, in 2020.

Sparks was born and raised largely in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

His parents got divorced when he was around 4 years old, and he lived with his mother for most of his childhood.

He began using his mother's stereo as a turntable at age 10 and began manipulating his favorite parts of recordings to create new songs.

When he was 12, he stole his first set of actual turntables and started making music for his groups and local artists.

Sparks was a rapper and a dancer who, with his entourage, would win local talent shows.

Around that time, he and his mother moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood in Boston.

Run-ins with the law throughout his youth prompted his mother to send him to live with his father in Jr high school, who struggled with alcoholism, in Randolph, Massachusetts.

He graduated from Randolph High School.

After high school at age 19, he got a job with UPS and moved back to Dorchester.

Eventually, he moved back in to his mother's home and built a recording studio in her basement where he would make original mixtapes and travel up and down the East Coast to hand them out.

An injury sustained while working for UPS required Sparks to undergo spinal surgery, severely limiting his ability to perform manual labor.

He began focusing more earnestly on music in the aftermath.

From his basement studio at his mother's house, Sparks was able to convince major record labels that he ran a successful online radio show.