Born in Los Angeles to a family for whom music was all-important, Matthew Alsberg started learning guitar and piano as a young child, and by the time he enrolled in high school (where he counted Murs, Double K from People Under the Stairs, and Eligh among his peers) he was also playing bass and trombone, studying both jazz and classical music, as well as listening to plenty of punk and hip-hop; he even began to rap himself, though he quickly stepped out of that and moved to production work instead. An active participant in the L.A. underground rap scene, Alsberg, who was now going by the name AntiMC, self-released his first album in 1998; he was also approached by friend Radioinactive for help with Radioinactive's Mush Records debut, Pyramidi, which came out in 2001. Mush co-founder Robert Curcio, who by then was a friend of Alsberg's, was impressed by what he heard and invited him to join the label. The producer's EP, Run, was released in 2003, followed by his debut full-length, Bitter Breaks, later that year. In 2004 AntiMC and Radioinactive teamed up again for Free Kamal, and after touring as a bandmember in Boom Bip, the multi-instrumentalist released It's Free, But It's Not Cheap in 2006. ~ Marisa Brown