Azie Faison

Azie Faison (pronounced "A.Z.") is an American former drug dealer, selling cocaine in Harlem, New York, as well as a rapper and founder of the underground hip-hop group MobStyle. His legacy has been referenced by several rap artists, and his life was the basis for the film Paid in Full produced by Roc-A-Fella Films.

Biography

Azie Faison Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York on November 10, 1964. A fire destroyed his tenement in 1970, forcing the family to relocate to the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, New York.

Faison - a ninth-grade dropout - worked in a neighborhood dry cleaners. Faison maintains that the movie Scarface strongly influenced his decision to become a drug dealer. In that same year 1984, a Dominican cocaine supplier approached Azie about selling the drug.

By the time he turned 21, Faison had become a cocaine wholesaler in his Harlem neighborhood, and regularly earned from $90,000 - $100,000 a week from his operations during the peak of America's "War on Drugs" between 1983-1990.