David "Tavdash" Hyatt was born in 1950 in Jamaica, but settled in Fayetteville, North Carolina two years later. In 1984, he would move to Golden Beach, Florida to fund his music business, and in 1988, he founded Tavdash Records.
Hyatt later found himself in legal troubles, when in the summer of 1993, he was found guilty of federal drug charges and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Hyatt maintained his innocence and claimed to have been framed.
While incarcerated, he met with Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder of Interscope Records, who was in talks to acquire Tavdash for an undisclosed sum, but the plan never materalized.
