This week I sit down with Christopher "Kid" Reid. Before House Party, the hit records, and the Saturday morning cartoon, Kid was a nine-year-old boy surviving the car crash that killed his mother and quietly preparing for a very different future, law school. In Part 1, Kid takes me through hip-hop's rise from a cultural movement to a mainstream force, and the part Kid 'N Play, Salt-N-Pepa, Heavy D and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince played in that crossover. He also opens up about the loss, the family rupture that followed, and how his Jamaican father's strict household shaped his discipline and drive.

He earned a degree from Lehman College, scored well on the LSAT, and gave himself just three years to make entertainment work before law school. This is Kid like you've never heard him.

Listen now on Battletested with Tanya Acker.