The artist known as Pennjamin Bannekar (real name Damion Hudson) was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan but raised in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago is where he discovered his passion for hip hop music especially with Chicago having the heart of an underground but very vibrant hip-hop scene. Falling in love with the creative process and writing, Penn decided to major in Communications and graduated from University of Illinois Champaign Urbana. College was where Penn began to grow as an artist and started to receive acclaim. Upon graduation, Penn came back to Chicago and formed the hip-hop group Project: Fr3sh with Mark Byrd and Mac Universe. While in Project: Fr3sh, Penn changed his name from Penn the God to Pennjamin Bannekar. Given the name by his friends as a joke, he began to love the meaning behind it and chose to use it as his stage name. 
 After a 2-year run with the group, Penn went solo and began to become the unsung hype of Chicago’s hip hop scene. His first solo project was his mixtape Hello World. The success of Hello World set up the release of his debut full-length album HeartBeat. HeartBeat was released on May 3, 2011. The first single from HeartBeat was ILLwrite. The single was a proper introduction of who he was and was picked up by MTV. Because of the amazing buzz surrounding the release of HeartBeat, he was able to tour with renowned artists such as Dwele, Elzhi and Bilal Oliver.