From the electric drum kit he received at seven to that snowy winter day when his pen first touched paper, music, Hip Hop, had claimed him as her own. Meet Darius Jaron Exum, aka Jay Verze from Owings Mills, MD. Raised by the tunes of The Temptations, The Isley Brothers and Michael Jackson, Jay found a love for music. In 2005, He grew his musical aptitude by taking keyboard lessons and learning how to play the trumpet. That same year, a very important event took place in his life– the 5th grade talent show. With hopeful stars in his eyes, he signed up to audition. Sadly, he could not make the cut. It was very difficult for him to overcome this lack of recognition as it lingered in his mind as a sign of poor skill. Verze was not content with failure as he steadily wrote, recorded and engineered music of his own. Seven years later, August of 2012, he released his debut project “21117 (TwoElevenSeventeen)”. It was received well by many and earned him the title as one of Baltimore’s most promising rappers in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. After coming so far, with his microphone in hand, he still stands with one goal–perfecting the craft he knows and loves. With the release of his most recent project “The Vintage EP:1995”, there’s no denying it; Jay is on the path to being a distinctive voice in rap music as we know it.